Neither Man nor Beast

by Carol J Adams

  Meanwhile, feminist animal theorists continued to work on important subjects. Josephine Donovan and I collected some of the new work in Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations (1995) and Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals (1996). We updated and expanded the latter book in 2007 as The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader.

  My concern in Chapter 8 in this book was the connections between violence against animals and violence in the home against human victims and the philosophical implications of those connections. At the end of “Bringing Peace Home” I wrote, “The movement to protect battered women needs to establish relationships with local veterinarians and animal advocates so that pets can be sheltered.” Many creative responses to this need to shelter animals have appeared, and domesticated animals have been added to the category of those who can be covered by Orders of Protections.

  Figure 3 Chalk sign, Sydney, Australia, March 2017, photograph by Laura Carey.

  Representations

  Rape culture exhibits how women occupy that murky area of being “neither man nor beast.” (See Kate Harding’s Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture—and What We Can Do About It.) Meat advertisements contribute to rape culture. Consider Figure 3. It reminds me of a meme circulating on social media called “chicken permission.” It shows first, a meal of “chicken parmesan” and next to it a chicken saying, “Yea, ok, sure go ahead.” One activist labeled this kind of image “suicide food” and devoted a website to providing the most offensive examples. But I see it as a part of rape culture, too, in the way it employs the concept of consent. One of the challenges for prosecuting rapists (besides the backlog of running rape kits, victim-blaming, identifying with the rapist instead of the rape victim, etc.; see Kate Harding’s Asking for It), is that consent is determined from the point of view of the rapist not the rape victim. Meat eaters like to believe their victims have consented to their deaths; often describing it as “sacrifice.”

  In recent years, what was submerged has re-emerged. With the resurgence of overt patriarchal attitudes, we find as well the return of the consumable female, naturalized and normalized. (She had been there all along. But a new tolerance for misogyny brings her more in focus.)

  Figure 4 Yard ‘n Coop, Manchester, England, October 2016, photograph by Faridah Newman.

  It’s been suggested that photo shoots from the White House in 2017 showing all white men at significant events (for example, signing away support for international abortion counseling) are deliberate. They send a reassuring message about white male supremacy to Trump’s base of supporters. “Mr. Trump promised he would make America great again, a slogan that included the implicit pledge to return white men to their place of historic supremacy. And that is precisely what these photos show.” Jill Filipovic explained in the New York Times: “President Trump ran a campaign of aggrieved masculinity, appealing to men who felt their rightful place in society has been taken from them by a stream of immigrants stealing their jobs, women who don’t need husbands to support them, and members of minority groups who don’t work as hard but still get special treatment.” They recognize how representations work to normalize and naturalize.

  Figure 5 Tobermory, Scotland, August 2016, photograph by Carol J. Adams.

  During the GOP presidential candidates’ debate on August 6, 2015 Megyn Kelly—who was then one of Fox News’ stars—said to Donald Trump, “You have called women you don't like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’ ” These examples of animalizing women are meant to demean them (in the view of the dominant culture) by seeing them as animal-like. As Leo Kuper notes, “The animal world has been a particularly fertile source of metaphors of dehumanization” (Kuper, 88). Later to CNN, Donald Trump said of Kelly: “you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever” (Rucker). Thus, he continued his practice of animalizing women. Upon meeting Brigitte Macron, spouse of France’s president in July 2017, who is twenty-five years older than her husband, Trump said, “You’re in such good shape … Beautiful!” As with Figure 4, what did he expect?

  We don’t realize that the act of viewing another as an object and the act of believing that another is an object are actually different acts because our culture has collapsed them into one. A part of our task is to expose misogynistic representations that animalized women and sexualize and feminize animals, presuming their availability for consumption.

  Art as Resistance

  One of the most exciting developments in the past twenty-four years is the emergence of feminist artists engaging with animal issues. After The Sexual Politics of Meat appeared in 1990, I began to hear from feminist artists who shared their artwork with me.

  Neither Man nor Beast included the work of a feminist artist, reproducing two images from Susan kae Grant’s installed piece, Vestiges (pages 171–74). Ever since, the work of feminist artists has been a part of my theoretical books.

  This past year I was honored by the opening of an exhibit in Los Angeles of work by women artists inspired by The Sexual Politics of Meat. Though I rarely tampered with the text of Neither Man nor Beast for this new edition, I did change the images, and included work by feminist artists, some of whom were represented in that exhibit.

  Critical theory is engaged theory: it understands bodies are at risk; it is informed by activism and it is written, in part, to inform activism. I thank Bloomsbury for its commitment to making this theory available, and to the new artists included in these pages for their amazing work. When one is positioned as neither man nor beast, that location turns out to be a creative one for the necessary dialogue among activism, theory, and art.

  Note

  In writing this preface I have drawn on and quoted from a few of my recent writings including:

  “Feminized Protein: Meaning, Representations, and Implications,” in Making Milk, edited by Mathilde Cohen and Yoriko Otomo. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.

  “Feminism and the Politics of Meat,” Discover Society, March 1, 2016. http://discoversociety.org/2016/03/01/feminism-and-the-politics-of-meat-2/

  “The Sexual Politics of Meat in the Trump Era,” in The Vegan Studies Reader, edited by Laura Wright. University of Nevada Press, forthcoming.

  Works Cited

  Adams , Carol J.2015. The Sexual Politics of Meat.Revelations edition. London: Bloomsbury.

  Adams , Carol J.2000. The Inner Art of Vegetarianism. New York: Lantern Books.

  Adams , Carol J.2001 [2008]. Living Among Meat Eaters: The Vegetarian’s Survival Guide. New York: Three Rivers Press; reprint New York: Lantern Books.

  Adams , Carol J.2004. Help! My child stopped eating meat! The Parents’ A-Z Guide to Surviving a Conflict in Diets.New York: Continuum International.

  Adams , Carol J.Forthcoming. Burger.New York: Bloomsbury.

  Adams , Carol J.2011. “After MacKinnon: Sexual Inequality in the Animal Movement.” In Animal Liberation and Critical Theory, edited by JohnSanbonmatsu and RenzoLlorente . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Reprinted in The Carol J. Adams Reader.New York: Bloomsbury, 2016.

  Adams , Carol J. and JosephineDonovan , eds. 1995. Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations.Durham and London: Duke University Press.

  Adams , Carol J. and PattiBreitman . 2008. How to Eat Like a Vegetarian Even If You Never Want to Be One. New York: Lantern Books.

  Adams , Carol J. and LoriGruen . 2014. “Groundwork.” In Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth, edited by Carol J.Adams and LoriGruen . New York: Bloomsbury.

  Adams , Carol J., Patti Breitman, and VirginiaMessina . 2014. Never Too Late to Go Vegan: The Over-50 Guide to Adopting and Thriving on a Plant-Based Diet. New York: The Experiment.

  Adams , Carol J., Patti Breitman, and VirginiaMessina . 2017. Even Vegans Die: A Compassionate Guide to Living your Values and Protecting your Legacy. New York: Lantern Books.

  Berger , John.1980. “Why Look at Ani
mals?” In About Looking.New York: Pantheon Books.

  Brophy , Brigid.1966. “The Rights of Animals.” In Don’t Never Forget: Collected Views and Reviews, 15–21. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. (First published in the Sunday Times, October 1965.)

  Carmon , Irin.2017. “If Abortions Become Illegal, Here’s How The Government Will Prosecute Women Who Have Them.” The Washington Post, April 28. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/04/28/if-abortions-become-illegal-heres-how-the-government-will-prosecute-women-who-have-them/?utm_term=799d1fb4e125 (accessed July 17, 2017).

  Desaulniers , Élise. 2016. Cash Cow: Ten Myths about the Dairy Industry, New York: Lantern Books.

  Donovan , Josephine and Carol J.Adams , eds. 1996. Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals.New York: Continuum.

  Donovan , Josephine and Carol J.Adams , eds. 2007. The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press.

  Eddy , Kathryn, L.A.Watson , and JanellO’Rourke . 2015. The Art of the Animal: Fourteen Women Artists Explore The Sexual Politics of Meat. New York: Lantern Books.

  Eisen , Jessica.2017. “Milk and Meaning: Pu zzles in Posthumanist Method.” In Making Milk, edited by MathildeCohen and YorikoOtomo . London: Bloomsbury.

  Fano , Alix.1997. Lethal Laws: Animal Testing, Human Health and Environmental Policy. London and New York: Zed Books.

  Filipovic , Jill.2017. “The All-Male Photo Op Isn’t a Gaffe. It’s a Strategy.” The New York Times, March 27. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/opinion/the-all-male-photo-op-isnt-a-gaffe-its-a-strategy.html?_r=0 (accessed May 4, 2017).

  Fraiman , Susan.2012. “Pussy Panic versus Liking Animals: Tracking Gender in Animal Studies.” Critical Inquiry, 39 (1): 89–115.Gillespie , Kathryn.2013. “Sexualized Violence and the Gendered Commodification of the Animal Body in Pacific Northwest US Dairy Production.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 21 (10): 1321–1337.Gillespie , Kathryn.2016. “Witnessing Animal Others: Bearing Witness, Grief, and the Political Function of Emotion.” Hypatia, 31 (3): 572–588.Gonnerman , Jennifer. 1997. “Inside Operation Rescue.” The Village Voice, February 11, 60.

  Harding , Kate.2015. Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture—and What We Can Do About It.Boston: Da Capo.

  Harper, A.Breeze . 2010. Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society. New York: Lantern Books.

  Harrison , Ruth.1964. Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry.London: Vincent Stuart Publishers.

  Jones , Maggie.2008. “The Barnyard Strategist.” New York Times Magazine, October 24.

  Kappeler , Suzanne.1986. The Pornography of Representation.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

  Ko , Aph and SylKo . 2017. Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters.New York: Lantern Books.

  Kuper , Leo.G enocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century.New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1983.

  Potts , Annie, ed. 2016. Meat Culture. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

  Reilly , Maura, ed. 2015. Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader.New York: Thames & Hudson.

  Rucker , Philip.2015. “Trump says Fox’s Megyn Kelly had ‘blood coming out of her wherever.’ ” Washington Post, August 8. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/07/trump-says-foxs-megyn-kelly-had-blood-coming-out-of-her-wherever/?utm_term=.539f6e6995bf (accessed January 23, 2017).

  Singer , Peter.1973. “Animal Liberation.” The New York Review of Books, 20 (5), April 5.

  Stănescu, Vasile. 2011. “ ‘Green’ Eggs and Ham? The Myth of Sustainable Meat and the Danger of the Local in the Works of Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and Joel Salatin.” In Critical Theory and Animal Liberation, edited by JohnSanbonmatsu , 239–256. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

  Stănescu , Vasile. 2016. “The Whopper Virgins: Hamburgers, Gender, and Xenophobia in Burger King’s Hamburger Advertising.” In Meat Culture, edited by AnniePotts . Leiden and Boston: Brill.

  Talbot , Margaret.2017. “Why It’s Become So Hard to Get an Abortion.” New Yorker, April 3. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/why-its-become-so-hard-to-get-an-abortion (accessed July 17, 2017).

  Taylor , Sunaura.2017. Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation.New York: The New Press.

  Wright , Laura.2017. The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror.Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press.

  Women come to represent the extreme of man’s fears for himself and his freedom. Since humanity is defined against animality, women threatened this self-conception to the extent that they were counted as members of the human species. Woman’s apparent inability to escape her physiological “animal” nature establishes her as an omnipresent challenge to a conception of the human being as transcending animality. In this regard, Sophocles’ quip, “a modest silence is a woman’s crown,” cited approvingly by Aristotle, and Thucydides’ remark in the Periclean funeral oration, that woman’s greatest glory is to be “least talked of among men,” each takes on an interesting hue. For speechlessness on the one hand and invisibility or absence in human discourse on the other are the traits not of persons but of animals. ...

  It was precisely the sharpness of the Athenian conception of manhood that bore with it a necessary degradation and oppression of women, a denial of the status of “human” to women. To the extent that women were viewed as part of the human species, they would recall to men the species’ animal or “natural” aspect. Alternatively, women could be denied fully human status and remain the somewhat less threatening repository of the “lower elements” of existence. Seen in this context, Aristotle’s infamous characterization of women as “deformed males” bears significance as more than incidental misogyny. Aristotle does not merely posit the general inferiority of women but describes them as “incomplete beings,” their thinking as “inconclusive,” and the female state in general as a condition of “deformity and weakness.” Women are also depicted as “matter” in need of the “form” only men can supply. Women are therefore not merely lesser humans than men but less-than-human, malformed, and ill-equipped for the human project, creatures in a gray area between beast and man.

  —Wendy Brown Manhood and Politics

  Preface

  Consider the image on the cover of the first edition of Neither Man nor Beast (p. iv): A cow shaped as a slim, human female body.1 Unlike beasts—conventionally defined as quadrupeds—this animal has successfully become bipedal. Thus, this image is neither man nor beast. Nor, interestingly, is she of any specific race. Combining human femaleness with cow femaleness while underemphasizing the udders or breasts glorifies the anorexic, human female body. It also imposes a sexualized element onto our picturing of cows. This image accompanied an article in the New York Times on a low-fat, low-cholesterol ground “beef.” Beef, of course, can come from cows or steers.2

  The emphasis on differences between humans and animals not only reinforces fierce boundaries about what constitutes humanness, but particularly what constitutes manhood. That which traditionally defined humans from animals—qualities such as reason and rationality—has been used as well to differentiate men from women. It is not surprising, therefore, to find images that combine those already equated in patriarchal culture.

  We have inherited a Western philosophic tradition that posits women as closer to animals and as maintaining the animal functions for the species (e.g., reproductive and child-rearing functions). Historically, as the epigraph to this preface illustrates, women were positioned in between man and the other animals, so that women, and especially women of color, were traditionally viewed in Western culture as neither man nor beast. The initial feminist response to this positioning between man and beast—found for instance in Mary Wollstonecraft and continuing today in liberal feminism—is to say “we are not animals, we are humans.” But this position assimilates the malestream culture�
��s contempt for animals within feminist theory.3 The human/animal boundary is left secure, while women are moved from one side of it to the other. An alternative feminist position asserts that we are not man, since man is not and never can be generic, and we are not beasts, since beast exists largely as metaphor for human behavior, as self-judgment. Rather than resituating any of the players from one side to the other, this position calls the human/animal dualism into question.

  The concept of beast exists to be self-referential, as a comment on humankind. Animals actually are neither man nor beast—neither mere caricatures of their own lives, nor stupid—but, like human beings, animals with social needs and interests. Feminists, too, are neither man nor beast. Feminists who defend animals challenge human beings to stop considering animals as beasts. Feminists and profeminist men also challenge persons born with penises to stop thinking of themselves as “man,”4 not only because being a man is tied into identities about what “real men” do and don’t do (real men don’t eat quiche, real men hunt—this we know from the homophobic insults that hunters hurl at animal defenders), but because “man” (read: white man) can exist as a concept and a sexual identity only through negation (“not woman, not beast, not colored,” i.e., “not the other”).

  Defenders of animals often elicit charges that we can either be for animals (beasts) or humanity (which remains man-identified). But this charge results from dualistic thinking that presupposes that our interests and needs are in opposition. This dualistic thinking is part of the problem: at some point humans no longer saw ourselves as animals. It results from a patriarchal framing of the discussion. The progressive feminist response is to eliminate such reactionary dualisms.