Animals and Women Feminist The

by Carol J Adams

  In the other detailed incident we will consider, the batterer killed the animal. It was described in the Los Angeles Times, and later quoted by Diana Russell in her important book, Rape in Marriage:

  The dawn of Michael Lowe ’ s madness came on a sunny July day as he watched his shaggy white sheepdog chase playfully after a pet chicken in the family ’ s rural Ramona yard. “ Come here! ” shouted Lowe to the dog. The animal, bought for Lowe ’ s wife as a puppy, pranced over and sat at her master ’ s feet. “ I told you not to chase the chickens, ” Lowe said to the dog. “ I told you not to chase the chickens. ”

  Lowe went inside the house and returned with a .357 magnum revolver. Cecilia Lowe knew what was about to happen, having become uncomfortable at that look, that tone of voice. She fell to her knees, pleading with Lowe not to harm the animal. She grabbed her husband around the legs and begged while the couple ’ s 20-month-old son stood by crying.

  Lowe casually pumped a shot into the dog. The sheepdog ran under the family ’ s truck, cowering in pain as Lowe went back into the house and returned with a .30-.30 Winchester rifle. He called to the animal and made her sit in front of him as he fired five more shots, killing the family pet. Three months later he did the same to his wife. Then he killed himself. (Russell 1990, 296)

  The Times implies that Lowe ’ s actions were “ madness ” ; however, they were consistent with the deliberate, calculated behavior of a man who wants to establish or maintain control. Cecilia Lowe ’ s discomfort with his look and his tone of voice, also suggest a man who has used controlling behavior before, and who, with only a look or a specific tone of voice, can insure obedience.

  Konrad Lorenz, in raising the issue of the morality of killing farm animals versus hunting nondomesticated animals, identifies the precise cruelty of a woman-batterer murdering a pet. While I do not agree with his confident assertion of the moral appropriateness of hunting, I do think he captures the cruel despotism that results through the institution of domestication:

  Morally it is much worse to wring the neck of a tame goose which approaches one confidently to take food from one ’ s hand than it is, at the expense of some physical effort and a great deal of patience, to shoot a wild goose which is fully conscious of its danger and, moreover, has a good chance of eluding it. (Lorenz 1955, viii)

  After being wounded by Lowe, the sheepdog still obediently came to him as he prepared to execute her. In this Lowe betrayed several relationships, not only with his wife and child, but also with the dog.

  Psychological Battering in the Wake of Harm to Animals

  Anne Ganley indicated that the execution of pets overlaps with psychological battering because it does not involve a direct attack on the primary victim ’ s body. The psychological battering continues in the wake of harm to animals — especially the execution of a pet — by denying the woman the opportunity to express her reality, that is to mourn the loss of the pet. Part of the control that a batterer enacts is the doing of something that causes tremendous feelings and then not allowing the expression of those feelings. As Kathleen Carlin of Men Stopping Violence has observed, “ It is a doubly powerful kind of sadistic control: ‘ I can hurt you so badly and then make it so that you cannot express it. ’ ” 7 Wanting to have sex after executing an animal would be a further way of denying her reality.

  Consider Cecilia Lowe ’ s situation after the killing of her dog by her husband. The dog was hers. 8 We do not know whether Michael gave her to Cecilia or not, though this again would conform with the controlling behavior of batterers. (Recall Michael Carrier who gave Kristin Lardner a kitten.) To whom could she turn with her grief over the loss of her dog and the serious threat her husband ’ s behavior posed?

  After an attack upon a pet in which the pet dies or she takes the pet to a pound, the woman experiences many feelings. She has lost a beloved friend, and thus feels profound grief. As with marital rape, she needs someone with whom to share her earth-shattering experience. Unfortunately, as with marital rape, the person to whom one would most logically turn for support and consolation is instead the cause of the pain. And the environment he is creating is one that punishes any initiative, that enforces a constricted and flat emotional life: “ Prolonged captivity undermines or destroys the ordinary sense of a relatively safe sphere of initiative, in which there is some tolerance for trial and error. To the chronically traumatized person, any action [including grieving] has potentially dire consequences ” (Herman 1992, 91).

  Mickie Gustafson ’ s Losing Your Dog (1992) describes the range of feelings and reactions that occur upon the death of a pet:

  [A] dead animal is more than just a dead body. It represents happiness that has been lost and a bond that has been severed. Harmony is suddenly missing, and a wonderful source of happiness is no more. The resulting feeling of loneliness may feel overwhelming and almost unbearable. (14)

  – Those who experience great grief share an overwhelming sense of desertion and loneliness, as well as a yearning for the deceased, which may become almost unbearable at times.

  – Life appears unreal and meaningless to a grieving person, who may often become apathetic and deeply depressed. (21)

  – “ He would tie me up and force me to have intercourse with our family dog. . . . He would get on top of me, holding the dog, and he would like hump the dog, while the dog had its penis inside me. ” (Walker 1979, 120)

  – One 25-year-old man raped his 16-year-old, menstruating, virgin girlfriend, by tying her spread eagled to the bed, and forcing his Doberman upon her. It took her eight years before she shared the story with anyone. (see McShane 1988, 73 – 75)

  – Linda “ Lovelace ” reports that she was forced — under threat of death by her batterer — to allow a dog to mount her in the production of a pornographic movie. “ From then on if I didn ’ t do something he wanted, he ’ d bring me a pet, a dog. ” ( “ Lovelace ” 105 – 13, also 206)

  – In a California case in which a man was brought to trial for raping his third wife, his first wife “ reported that her husband had purchased a large dog and trained it to have sex with her. Watching this occur enabled him to become sufficiently aroused to have intercourse with her. ” (Russell 1990, xii)

  In these passages, Gustafson is describing the grief and emptiness in the wake of a pet ’ s death from old age or from euthanasia. But the deaths that battered women mourn may be unexpected and sudden, or they may be expected — some women in fact may have been bracing themselves for such violence. In either case, the deaths occur within a context of violence and control. In addition to grieving, the woman may feel guilt, rage, hopelessness, for not being able to protect the animal from death at the hands of her partner:

  The kitten was sitting in the yard. Billy got his rifle, walked up to it, and shot it. Then he hunted down the other two cats and shot them. Kim was hysterical — following him around, tugging on him, jumping up and down and screaming. She begged him not to kill the cats, and after he had, she begged him not to leave them there. So he picked them up and threw them over the fence. After Billy went to sleep that night, Kim crept out, found the cats, and buried them. Then she lay down in the field and cried. She blamed herself for their deaths. She should never have brought them to live around Billy. It seemed like all that was left was for Billy to kill her. Her diary for that day reads, “ I wish I were dead. I wish I had been shot, too. ” (Browne 1987, 154)

  If a battered woman realizes the life-threatening nature of the batterer ’ s behavior toward the animal while the animal still lives, she may decide to take the animal to the pound in order to protect him or her. This will be equally devastating in terms of her relationship with the pet. She will still need to mourn the ending of the relationship even if she can console herself that at least the animal continues to live. (Of course, given the pet overpopulation problem, the shelter may euthanize the animal.) Gustafson describes the specific feelings one experiences in response to forced separation: “ Having to choose between keeping
your dog and something else may lead to feelings of anger and disappointment at being forced to make such a choice ” (Gustafson 1992, 106).

  Gustafson identifies “ exaggerated anger and irritation ” (20) as characteristics of the grieving person after the death (or loss to the pound) of a dog. But anger is one of those emotions that battered women are not supposed to express, constantly monitoring their emotions so that they will be flat in relationship to the controlling man. This is both a survival strategy and a coping mechanism. Ann Jones and Susan Schecter describe how many women “ push down their angry feelings for fear that expressing anger may trigger even greater anger in the controlling partner ” (Jones and Schecter 1992, 44 – 45). In the case of an animal ’ s murder, the anger may be all the more legitimate, while necessarily being all the more denied. Thus psychological control continues after the death of the animal.

  One final step remains that many batterers take before the woman is truly “ broken. ” As Judith Herman describes it: “ the final step in the psychological control of the victim is not completed until she has been forced to violate her own moral principles and to betray her basic human attachments. Psychologically, this is the most destructive of all coercive techniques. . . . In domestic battery, the violation of principles often involves sexual humiliation. Many battered women describe being coerced into sexual practices that they find immoral or disgusting ” (Herman 1992, 83). For some batterers, sexual coercion involves forcing sex between a woman and an animal. Thus, a batterer forces her to violate her basic attachments to others — human and nonhuman.

  Forced Sex with Animals

  A little-discussed form of battering involves the use of animals for humiliation and sexual exploitation by batterers and/or marital rapists. Batterers and marital rapists (and the two groups are neither mutually exclusive nor completely inclusive of each other) sometimes force sex between a woman and animal. For instance:

  Pornography is often used when men force sex between a woman and an animal. It may be used as a desensitizing process. She is drawn into the process at first by him encouraging her to look at pornography with him — for instance, by watching videos together. This part she may like. But his goal is to raise her tolerance to the activities depicted so that she will duplicate them. Or, he consumes the pornography on his own and then wishes to reenact what he has seen.

  – He started taking me to sex shows where there were women and animals, esp. snakes. ( Pornography and Sexual Violence 1988, 68, testimony by Ms. A)

  – This guy had seen a movie where a woman was being made love to [ sic ] by dogs. He suggested that some of his friends had a dog and we should have a party and set the dog loose on the women. He wanted me to put a muzzle on the dog and put some sort of stuff on my vagina so that the dog would lick there. (Russell 1984, 126)

  – One woman known to us related that her spouse always had a number of pornographic magazines around the house. The final episode that resulted in ending the marriage, was his acting out a scene from one of the magazines. She was forcibly stripped, bound, and gagged. And with the help from her husband, she was raped by a German shepherd. ( Pornography and Sexual Violence 1988, 104, testimony of Ms. Rice Vaugh)

  Through pornography, dogs, snakes, and other animals help a man picture himself in the scene. They become stand-ins for the male phallus. 9 And this is true with watching forced sex between his female partner and an animal. Forced sex with animals is an indication of how abusive men extensively sexualize and objectify their relationships, including their relationships with other animals.

  What does it mean in terms of the man ’ s life-threatening behavior when he forces sex between a woman and an animal? I put this question to Kathleen Carlin of Men Stopping Violence. She replied:

  They represent different types of danger — whatever it is that the man uses, if there is a stand-in for him, it increases the sense of omnipotence of the man watching. It feeds the sense of him that merges his omnipotence and his use of her as an object, whether it is an animal or a machine. In one sense that increases the danger because it heightens the level of acceptable abuse. It merges his sense of omnipotence and her objectifection. It intensifies her as an object. (conversation with author, autumn 1993)

  From the abuser ’ s point of view, he is sexually using an animal as an object, just as others may use baseball bats or pop bottles. 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. They become to him no different — and no less expendable than a pop bottle. Ann Jones refers to instances such as these as pimping and categorizes forcible rape with an animal as torture (1994, 85, 93). 10 Surely, it is torture to the animal as well.

  Forced sex with a pet animal may intensify the sense that a woman is betraying her basic attachments. Understandably, she will see this as immoral and disgusting. Coercive sex is always humiliating; coercive sex using an implement other than the man ’ s body demonstrates how fully she, too, is an object without individuality, any particularity. When Linda Marchiano claimed her own name and her voice, she explained that forced sex with a dog made her feel “ totally defeated. There were no greater humiliations left for me ” ( “ Lovelace ” 1980, 113).

  Sexual coercion using an animal violates many women ’ s moral, relationship principles. It is often the most unspeakable aspect of being a hostage to a violent man. For women political prisoners in Chile who had been raped by trained dogs,

  When we examine the reasons a man may harm an animal as part of battering, we can perceive his deliberate attempts at controlling her. These are the strategies.

  1. He harms an animal to demonstrate his power . Making someone watch the torture of another is ultimate mastery, saying through these actions “ this is what I can do and there is nothing you can do to stop me. ” She may wish to protect the animal, but she realizes she is unable to. She may feel she let the pet down, or she may be hurt trying to protect the pet, and discover she cannot protect herself or the pet. Sometimes efforts to protect a pet may result in increased violence toward the woman (see, for instance, Dutton 1992, 27). In harming an animal, the man who batters simultaneously demonstrates his omnipotence and her complete loss of control.

  2. He harms an animal to teach submission . Ann Jones describes the experience of one woman, whose husband decided to “ teach submission ” by forcing her to watch him “ dig her grave, kill the family cat, and decapitate a pet horse ” (Jones 1980, 298). Inconsistent and unpredictable outbursts of violence such as harming animals are meant to convince the victim “ that resistance is futile, and that her life depends upon winning his indulgence through absolute compliance ” ; the perpetrator ’ s goal is to instill both fear of death and “ gratitude for being allowed to live ” (Herman 1992, 77).

  3. He executes a pet to isolate her from a network of support and relationship . Her relationship with her pet may have been the last meaningful relationship she had been allowed to have. One way a man controls his partner is by severely limiting her social network, restricting her access to friends and families. In this way, he actively destroys her sense of self in relation to others (Herman 1992, 77). Murdering an animal severs a meaningful relationship. It also destroys the woman ’ s sense of self, which was validated through that relationship. If this was the last remaining relationship she was allowed to have, in the loss of the pet she will see the loss of herself. Furthermore, the pet ’ s presence may have helped her avoid adopting the batterer ’ s point of view. It may also isolate her from friends who have pets, or make her feel dehumanized and hence alienated from other humans. She may be fearful around other peop
le who have pets, feeling bad because she has lost her pet, and also feeling that, although she was not the perpetrator, the other animals may not be safe because her own animals are dead. Because she may feel uncomfortable watching other people with animals, or may fear for these animals, she will restrict her contact with other people who have pets. 12

  4. He hurts pets because he is enraged when he sees self-determined action on the part of women and children . He wishes to control their actions; their self-determined responses to others, including other animals, infuriate him. Allowed a self-indulgent rage by society, he expresses it with impunity.

  5. He harms an animal to perpetuate the context of terror, so he may not need to do anything else. As Judith Herman observes, “ It is not necessary to use violence often to keep the victim in a constant state of fear. The threat of death or serious harm is much more frequent than the actual resort to violence. Threats against others are often as effective as direct threats against the victim ” (1992, 77). Furthermore, making someone watch torture is a particular form of terror:

  Torture or destruction of a loved pet may be an even more powerful abuse than personal abuse. One woman witnessed a succession of 12 kittens tortured and eventually killed by her batterer. (Dutton 1992, 27)

  [t]his is evidently one of the most brutalizing and traumatic experiences suffered by women in prison. The survivors of this torment find it very difficult to report their exposure to this extreme sexual debasement. With sickening canniness, the torturers traumatize their victims into feeling shame for their own bodies. (Bunster-Bunalto 1993, 257)