Book Read Free

Neither Man nor Beast

Page 32

by Carol J Adams


  7. Barbara Ehrenreich, “The Woman behind the Fetus,” New York Times, April 28, 1989.

  8. Beverly Wildung Harrison, Our Right to Choose: Toward a New Ethic of Abortion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), p. 213.

  9. Information from Alan Guttmacher Institute. The failure rate for the oral contraceptive is 6 percent; for the condom, 14 percent; for the diaphragm, 16 percent; and for spermicides, 26 percent.

  10. Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 319.

  11. Both quoted in Dena Kleiman, “Debate on Abortion Focuses on Graphic Film,” Conscience 6, no. 2 (March/April 1985), p. 11.

  12. Charles A. Gardner, “Is an Embryo a Person?” Nation, November 13, 1989, p. 559.

  13. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Woman’s Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom (New York and London: Longman, 1984), p. 375.

  14. Ibid., p. 347.

  15. Ruth Macklin, “Personhood and the Abortion Debate,” Abortion: Moral and Legal Perspectives, ed. Jay Garfield and Patricia Hennessey (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), pp. 82, 83.

  16. On this see Linda Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: Birth Control in America (New York: Penguin Books, 1977).

  17. Quoted in Petchesky, Abortion and Woman’s Choice, p. 29.

  18. Harrison, Our Right to Choose, pp. 9, 16.

  19. Andrea Dworkin, Right-wing Women (New York: Perigee Books, 1983).

  20. Greta Gaard suggests another reason: that “the unborn fetus is often seen as male, as potentially male—thus, men seek to punish women as mothers.” Correspondence, August 8, 1990.

  21. .Note, I am not arguing for population control here, nor encouraging such a position vis-à-vis the Two-Thirds world. As Betsy Hartmann argues, over-population is not the root cause of development problems in the Two-Thirds world; improvements in living standards and the position of women is what is needed, as well as expanded reproductive choices, rather than restrictive ones. See Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control and Contraceptive Choice (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).

  22. John Cobb, Jr., Matters of Life and Death (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), p. 71.

  23. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Women, Sexuality, Ecology, and the Church,” Conscience 9, no. 4 (July/August 1990), p. 10.

  24. See for instance Sallie McFague, The Body of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).

  25. I am indebted to the work of Ronnie Zoe Hawkins, especially “Reproductive Choices: The Ecological Dimension.”

  26. This viewpoint was most notably expressed by Colman MacCarthy in an interview with Animals’ Agenda, in which he said:

  In 1971, the American Medical Association [AMA]—one of the most regressive lobbies, and one that has opposed most medical reforms over the years—came out for abortion. How’d that happen, I wonder? It happened because there were enormous profits to be made. Two years later, the Supreme Court came out in favor of abortion. Who wrote the decision? Justice Harry Blackmun. Who’s Harry Blackmun? Former general counsel for the AMA. Think that’s a coincidence? Blackmun’s argument in Roe v. Wade was uncannily similar to the AMA position. So you have the reactionary doctors in favor of abortion.

  Kim Bartlett, “An Interview with Colman McCarthy, On Peace, Justice, and the American Way,” Animals’ Agenda, 8, no. 7 (September/October 1988), p. 9. Many pro-choice advocates would agree with McCarthy that Roe v. Wade is troubling because of the role granted medical doctors; but they would argue that what this decision should have affirmed was a woman’s constitutional right to abortion, rather than the notion of privacy in the relationship between a woman and her doctor.

  27. See, for example, “Use of Animals in Biomedical Research: The Challenge and Response,” AMA White Paper, March 1988.

  28. James C. Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 262.

  29. Ibid., p. 37.

  30. Ibid., p. 167.

  31. Ibid., pp. 168–69. See also Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Abortion Movement and the AMA, 1850–1880,” in Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

  32. Kristen Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), p. 33.

  33. See, for instance, Connie Clement’s “The Case for Lay Abortion: Learning from Midwifery,” Healthsharing, Winter 1983, pp. 9–14. (Many midwives, however, are discomforted by the argument that midwives should perform abortions.)

  34. For a discussion of the continuum of violence against women including harassing phone calls and flashers, see Liz Kelly, Surviving Sexual Violence (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

  Chapter 4

  Epigraph from Steve Baker, Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 83

  1. Issues such as “work with pregnant teenagers, prenatal care advocacy, activism to reduce the high infant and maternal death rate of Black women; organizing to end hazardous workplaces, racism, sterilization abuse, and violence; AIDS activism, and the expansion of gay and lesbian rights and child care access.” See Marlene Gerber Fried, ed. From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1990), p. x.

  2. The metaphor is Derrick Bell’s, who argues that “Black people are the magical faces at the bottom of society’s well.” Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992).

  3. “Whitened center” is Bettina Aptheker’s term, cited in Nancie Caraway, Segregated Sisterhood: Racism and the Politics of American Feminism (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1991), p. 4.

  4. See bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984), pp. 54–55.

  5. Term used by Caraway, Segregated Sisterhood, p. 22.

  6. Zuleyma Tang Halpin, “Scientific Objectivity and the Concept of the ‘Other,’ ” Women’s Studies International Forum 12, no. 3 (1989), p. 286.

  7. Caroline Whitbeck, “A Different Reality: Feminist Ontology,” in Women, Knowledge, and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, ed. Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), p. 51.

  8. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law,” Harvard Law Review vol. 101, 7 (May 1988), pp. 1372, 1381.

  9. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 71.

  10. Delores S. Williams, “African-American Women in Three Contexts of Domestic Violence,” Concilium: Violence Against Women (London: SCM Press, Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994), p. 41, quoting The Negro: What is His Ethnological Status (1867), in John David Smith’s Anti-Black Thought, 1863–1925, Vols. 5 and 6. See also Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro: 1550–1812 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 228–39.

  11. Williams, “African-American Women in Three Contexts of Domestic Violence,” p. 41.

  12. Halpin, “Scientific Objectivity,” pp. 287–88.

  13. Hazel V. Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist (New York: Oxford, 1987), p. 32.

  14. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Whose Story Is It Anyway? Feminist and Antiracist Appropriations of Anita Hill,” in Race-ing Justice, Engendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), p. 411.

  15. Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro: 1550–1812 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 238.

  16. See “Black Women and Porn,” WHISPER: Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt 7, no. 1 (Spring 1993), p. 10.

  17. Crenshaw, “Whose Story Is It Anyway?,” p. 413.

&n
bsp; 18. See Diana E. H. Russell, Rape in Marriage: Expanded and Revised Edition with a New Introduction (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 64–65.

  19. See also Angela P. Harris, “Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory,” in Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender, ed. Katharine T. Bartlett and Rosanne Kennedy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), who points out that “The paradigm experience of rape for black women has historically involved the white employer in the kitchen or bedroom” (p. 246).

  20. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics” in Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender, ed. Katharine T. Bartlett and Rosanne Kennedy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 68–69. See also Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow, 1984), p. 86.

  21. Paul Hoch, White Hero, Black Beast: Racism, Sexism and the Mask of Masculinity (London: Pluto Press, 1979), p. 44.

  22. Thanks to Mary Hunt, Marie Fortune, and Kathleen Carlin for helping me to think through this dilemma.

  23. Joel Kovel, White Racism: A Psychohistory (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), p. 67. S ee also Jordan, White Over Black, pp. 154–63, and Cornel West, “Black Sexuality: The Taboo Subject,” in Race Matters (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), pp. 117–31.

  24. George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (New York: Harper, 1971), p. 276.

  25. Jordan, White Over Black, pp. 239, 232. Let us not forget, however, that miscegnation was seen as a social taboo in terms of any public relationship between two people of different races, but the white male sexual practice of assaulting and raping black women was tolerated by whites, including many white women.

  26. Morrison, Playing in the Dark, p. 38.

  27. Ibid., p. 57.

  28. Ibid., p. 38.

  29. Thanks to Mary Hunt for helping me pose these questions.

  30. This insight was proposed by Andy Smith. Conversation, May 1994.

  31. Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” p. 58.

  32. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 222, 225. See also Deborah H. King, “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 14, no. 1 (1988), pp. 42–72.

  33. bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston: South End Press, 1989), p. 175.

  34. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), p. 115.

  35. See Robert D. Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston: South End Press, 1993).

  36. Karen J. Warren, “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism.” Environmental Ethics 12 (Summer) 1990, p. 132.

  37. See María Lugones, “Playfulness, ‘World’-Travelling, and Loving Perception,” in Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras—Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color, ed. Gloria Anzaldúa (San Francisco: An Aunt Lute Foundation Book), pp. 390–402.

  38. Collins, Black Feminist Thought, p. 171.

  39. “The P. Word,” Bunny Huggers’ Gazette, no. 13 (1992), p. 14.

  40. Tom Juravich, “The Ten Worst Jobs Today Are Not the Dirtiest Ones,” Buffalo News, March 13, 1991.

  41. See Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture (New York: Dutton, 1992), pp. 125–31, for more information on this.

  42. Michael W. Fox, Farm Animals: Husbandry, Behavior, and Veterinary Practice (Viewpoints of a Critic) (Baltimore: University Park Press, 1984), p. 41n.

  43. Quoted in Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef, p. 127.

  44. See Elayne Clift, “Advocate Battles for Safety in Mines and Poultry Plants,” New Directions for Women, May/June 1990, p. 3, and Andrea Lewis, “Looking at the Total Picture: A Conversation with Health Activist Beverly Smith,” in The Black Women’s Health Book: Speaking for Ourselves, ed. Evelyn C. White (Seattle: Seal Press, 1990), p. 175.

  45. Lewis, “Looking at the Total Picture,” pp. 175–76.

  46. Rosemary Radford Ruether, To Change the World: Christology and Cultural Criticism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 61.

  47. On this, see the Institute for Natural Process, “In Usual and Accustomed Places: Contemporary American Indian Fishing Rights Struggle,” in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, ed. M. Annette Jaimes (Boston: South End Press, 1992), pp. 217–39.

  Epigraphs to Part Two: Katie Cannon, cited in Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), p. 201. Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in the Field of Vision (London: New Left Books, 1986), p. 148.

  Chapter 5

  1. My starting point here is that ecofeminists seek to end the pernicious logic of domination that has resulted in the interconnected subordination of women and nature. The ecofeminist analysis of nature requires a more vocal naming of animals as a part of that subordinated nature. Ecofeminists and environmental theorists generally favor a more biotic way of framing the problem of the oppression of nature than that represented in animal rights theory. The problem is that each time the biotic environmentalist discourse is willing to sacrifice individual animals as edible bodies, it endorses an ideology that is a part of the logic of domination it ostensibly resists, while participating in the human-animal dualism. It also demonstrates the reason that arguments for rights and interests of individual animals have been so insistently raised.

  2. Among those interviewed were activists and writers such as Judy Norsigian and Wendy Sanford of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Lisa Leghorn, Kate Cloud, Karen Lindsey, Pat Hynes, Mary Sue Henifin, Kathy Maio, Susan Leigh Starr, and many others.

  3. Ingrid Newkirk with C. Burnett, “Animal Rights and the Feminist Connection,” pp. 67–69; Victoria Moran, “Learning Love at an Early Age: Teaching Children Compassion for Animals,” pp. 54–56; Donna Albino, “C.E.A.S.E: Building Animal Consciousness. An Interview with Jane Lidsky,” pp. 64–66; and Alice Walker, “Why Did the Balinese Chicken Cross the Road?” p. 50. In Woman of Power: A Magazine of Feminism, Spirituality, and Politics 9 (1988).

  4. Norma Benney, “All of One Flesh: The Rights of Animals.” In Reclaim the Earth: Women Speak Out for Life on Earth, ed. Léonie Caldecott and Stephanie Leland (London: Women’s Press, 1983), pp. 141–51.

  5. Sally Abbott, “The Origins of God in the Blood of the Lamb,” in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed. Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), p. 36.

  6. Marti Kheel, “Ecofeminism and Deep Ecology: Reflections on Identity and Difference,” in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed. Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), pp. 128–37.

  7. See Greta Gaard, ed., Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).

  8. See Greta Gaard, “Feminists: Animals, and the Environment: The Transformative Potential of Feminist Theory.” Paper presented at the annual convention of the National Women’s Studies Association, Towson State University, June 14–18, 1989, Baltimore.

  9. Noël Sturgeon, “Editorial Statement,” in Ecofeminist Newsletter 2, no. 1 (Spring 1991), p. 1.

  10. Charlene Spretnak, “Ecofeminism: Our Roots and Flowering,” in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed. Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), pp. 5–6.

  11. Sheila Collins, A Different Heaven and Earth (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1974), p. 161.

  12. My own Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum
, 1990) began as a paper for Daly’s class on feminist ethics and was published in the Lesbian Reader the following year. In her book, The Rape of the Wild: Man’s Violence against Animals and the Earth (London: Women’s Press, 1988), Daly’s close friend, Andrée Collard, applies Daly’s feminist philosophy of biophilia to animals. As early as 1975, Collard was working on the intersection of the oppression of women and oppression of animals.

  13. See Karen J. Warren, “Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections” Environmental Ethics 9, no. 1 (1987), pp. 3–20.

  14. Warren, “Feminism and Ecology,” p. 6.

  15. See ibid. and Karen J. Warren “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism,” Environmental Ethics 12 (Summer) 1990, pp. 128–33.

  16. This pattern of identification with animals in the early years of the women’s liberation movement has been noted by Bleier in discussing research on primates. She summarizes Sarah Blaffer Hardy’s recounting of how women primatologists “identified with the female primates they were observing and with their problems, at the same time (in the 1970s) that they began to be aware of and to articulate problems that women confront in their world.” Ruth Bleier, ed., Feminist Approaches to Science (Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press), p. 13.

  17. Warren’s fourth point, that ecological movements must include a feminist perspective, is not as apparent in the 1976 interviews. The movement to defend animals traces its roots to Peter Singer’s 1975 text Animal Liberation; thus the feminist critique of this movement was not readily apparent in 1976 because the movement itself was in its gestational period. Subsequent feminist writings apply a feminist critique to animal defense while agreeing with the premise that the exploitation of animals must be challenged. (See, for instance, Josephine Donovan, “Animal Rights and Feminist Theory,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 15, no. 2 [1990], pp. 350–75.) The politics of identification is a de facto critique of arguments on behalf of animals based on dominant philosophies, since it does not attempt to establish criteria for rights but speaks to responsibility and relationships. In The Sexual Politics of Meat, I use feminist literary criticism as the starting point for developing feminist theory about the exploitation of animals. By choosing this as my methodology, I immediately located my terrain as the study of women’s lives, thoughts, experiences, and writings. This was consistent with my theory that once we place women’s lives and experiences as central to our understanding of animal defense, we are starting from a radically different place.

 

‹ Prev