Neither Man nor Beast

by Carol J Adams

  9. See Jan Berliner Statman, “Life Doesn’t Have to Be like This: How to Spot a Batterer before an Abusive Relationship Begins.” In The Battered Woman’s Survival Guide: Breaking the Cycle (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1990). Note these are some factors that abusers, especially those who are violent, share in common, but there is no one profile of a batterer.

  10. Deborah J. Pope-Lance and Joan Chamberlain Engelsman, A Guide for Clergy on the Problems of Domestic Violence (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey Department of Community Affairs Division on Women, 1987), p. 40.

  11. Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992), p. 149. This should not be understood to suggest that the absence of this behavior means that the batterer’s actions are not life-threatening. It is very difficult to assess the danger to or predict the safety of battered women because any one incident can result in her death.

  12. Reported in the Dallas Times Herald, June 15, 1991.

  13. Angela Browne, When Battered Women Kill (New York: Free Press, 1987), p. 133; see also Walker, Terrifying Love, pp. 20–21.

  14. Diana E. H. Russell, Rape in Marriage, rev. ed. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 296.

  15. Ganley, Court-Mandated Counseling for Men who Batter, p. 15.

  16. Browne, When Battered Women Kill, p. 157.

  17. Ibid., pp. 153–54.

  18. These same acts of battering occur in some lesbian relationships. While human male violence is responsible for most of the damage to women and the other animals in cases of battering, a patriarchal, hierarchical culture will find expressions of this form of violence in some women’s same-sex relationships. Where there is an acceptance of a patriarchal value hierarchy, some will wish to establish control (and be on top in terms of the hierarchy) through violence. Claire Renzetti reports that her research regarding lesbian battering revealed that “thirty-eight percent of the respondents who had pets reported that their partners had abused the animals” (Claire M. Renzetti, Violent Betrayal: Partner Abuse in Lesbian Relationships [Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992], p. 21). These acts of battering, like heterosexual battering, are considered violent and coercive behavior. (See Barbara Hart, “Lesbian Battering: An Examination,” in Naming the Violence: Speaking Out about Lesbian Battering, ed. Kerry Lobel [Seattle: Seal Press, 1986], p. 188.) The battered lesbian whose partner injures or destroys a pet faces a triple burden: overcoming the invisibility or trivializing of lesbian battering, the invisibility or trivializing of abuse to animals, and overcoming homophobia in seeking help.

  19. See Russell, Rape in Marriage, p. xii.

  20. Lenore Walker, The Battered Woman (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 120.

  21. Linda “Lovelace” [Linda Marchiano], with Mike McGrady, Ordeal (New York: Berkley Books, 1980), pp. 105–13; specifically pp. 113, 112, see also p. 206.

  22. Linda “Lovelace” [Linda Marchiano], Out of Bondage (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart Inc., 1986), p. 141, quoting Chip Visci of the Detroit Free Press.

  23. “Lovelace,” Out of Bondage, p. 194.

  24. See Diana E. H. Russell, Sexual Exploitation: Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, and Workplace Harassment (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1984), p. 126.

  25. Sylvia Fraser, My Father’s House: A Memoir of Incest and of Healing (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), pp. 11–12.

  26. Alice Vachss, Sex Crimes (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 46.

  27. See Kathleen Coulborn Faller, Understanding Child Sexual Maltreatment (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990), p. 196.

  28. See Faller, Understanding Child Sexual Maltreatment, pp. 56–57.

  29. See Frank R. Ascione, “Children Who Are Cruel to Animals: A Review of Research and Implications for Developmental Psychopathology.” Anthrozoos 6, no. 4 (1993), pp. 226–47.

  30. See American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed. rev. (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1987), p. 53.

  31. Kathryn Brohl, Pockets of Craziness: Examining Suspected Incest (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1991), p. 24.

  32. Ascione, “Children Who Are Cruel to Animals,” p. 238–39.

  33. Donald T. Lunde, Murder and Madness (San Francisco: San Francisco Book Co., 1976), p. 53.

  34. Quoted in Robert Dvorchak, “Dahmer’s Troubled Childhood Offers Clues but No Simple Answers,” Dallas Times Herald, August 11, 1991.

  35. See Robert K. Ressler, Ann W. Burgess, Carol R. Hartman, John E. Douglas, and Arlene McCormack, “Murderers Who Rape and Mutilate,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 1, no. 3 (1986), pp. 273–87.

  36. Timothy M. Phelps and Helen Winternitz, Capitol Games: The Inside Story of Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and a Supreme Court Nomination (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993), p. 315.

  37. Spelman, “Woman as Body,” pp. 120, 127.

  38. See ibid., p. 127.

  39. See, for instance, Linda LeMoncheck, Dehumanizing Women: Treating Persons as Sex Objects (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985), especially pp. 14–21.

  40. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Whose Story Is It Anyway? Feminist and Antiracist Appropriations of Anita Hill,” In Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), p. 412.

  41. Lorene Cary, Black Ice (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 156.

  42. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 170–71, 172.

  43. Sander L. Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature,” Critical Inquiry 12 (1985), p. 212. bell hooks extends Gilman’s analysis in “Selling Hot Pussy,” Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, South End Press, 1992), pp. 61–77.

  44. See Alice Mayall and Diana E. H. Russell, “Racism in Pornography,” in Making Violence Sexy, ed. Diana E. H. Russell (New York: Teachers College, 1992).

  45. This discussion of epistemological issues was worked out with the supportive insights and patient prodding of Nancy Tuana.

  46. Lorraine Code, What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 82, quoting Annette Baier, “Cartesian Persons,” in Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind and Morals (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985). I concede that the article that introduces the concept of second persons appears to exclude animals from being participants in this process, as Baier distinguishes between human and animal consciousness. Thus, I may be extending the concept beyond the bounds that I suspect Baier, or perhaps even Code, might grant. However, I believe that such extension is legitimate, and question the epistemological assumptions that undergird claims about animals’ lack of certain forms of consciousness.

  47. Code, What Can She Know?, p. 85.

  48. Ibid., p. 86.

  49. Ibid., p. 121.

  50. See Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983) on animals having a biography, and Barbara Noske, Humans and Other Animals, on the need for an anthropology of animals.

  51. Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 168.

  52. Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988).

  53. See Karen J. Warren, “Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections,” Environmental Ethics 9, no. 1 (1987), pp. 3–20 and “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism,” Environmental Ethics 12 (Summer) 1990, pp. 125–46.

  54. Sara Ruddick, “Notes toward a Feminist Peace Politics,” in Gendering War Talk, ed. Miriam Cooke and Angela Woollacott (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 118.

  55. Wendy Brown, Manhood and Politics: A Feminist Reading in Political Theory (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988), p. 56.

  56. Chal
lenges to the ways by which we draw the line between “human” and “animal” can be found in the writings of Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (New York: Routledge, 1990) and Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989); Lynda Birke, “Science, Feminism, and Animal Natures I: Extending the Boundaries” and “Science, Feminism, and Animal Natures II: Feminist Critiques and the Place of Animals in Science,” Women’s Studies International Forum 14, no. 5 (1991), pp. 443–50, 451–58; Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983) and Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1978); and Noske, Humans and Other Animals, among others.

  57. Karen J. Warren, correspondence July 1993.

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

  59. See Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989).

  60. See, for instance, Lynne A. Foster, Christine Mann Veale, and Catherine Ingram Fogel, “Factors Present When Battered Women Kill,” Issues in Mental Health Nursing 10 (1989), pp. 273–84, on the presence of a firearm in the home as one of the factors present in battering relationships that end in homicide.

  61. See Richard A. Stordeur and Richard Stille, Ending Men’s Violence against Their Partners: One Road to Peace (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989).

  62. I acknowledge the logistical problem this issue presents, and the concern that women might abandon the animals, not because of cruelty or insensitivity, but because they are overwhelmed with reshaping their own lives and feel that the animals are safer removed from the batterer’s presence. Still, I believe it is an important step to make in protecting women and animals. I am indebted to DeLora Frederickson and Pam Wilhoite for their advocacy of this program. For information on setting up such a program, which is currently a project of Feminists for Animal Rights, please send a stamped (fifty-two cent) self-addressed envelope to Feminists for Animal Rights at P. O. Box 16425, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27516.

  63. See Joan Zorza, “Woman-Battering: A Major Cause of Homelessness,” Clearinghouse Review (special issue, 1991), pp. 421–29.

  64. See Maria P. Root, “Persistent, Disordered Eating as a Gender-Specific, Post-Traumatic Stress Response to Sexual Assault,” Psychotherapy 28, no. 1 (1991), pp. 96–102 and G. Sloan and P. Leichner, “Is There a Relationship between Sexual Abuse or Incest and Eating Disorders?” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 31, no. 7 (1986), pp. 656–60.

  65. Judy Krizmanic, “Perfect Obsession: Can Vegetarianism Cover up an Eating Disorder?,” Vegetarian Times, June 1992, p. 58.

  66. Hudson, Ritual Child Abuse, p. 32; see also Gould, “Diagnosis and Treatment of Ritually Abused Children,” p. 214.

  67. See Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990), pp. 159–62.

  68. Krizmanic, “Perfect Obsession,” p. 59.

  69. Vachss, Sex Crimes, p. 172.

  70. Jay McDaniel, “Green Grace,” Earth Ethics: Evolving Values for an Earth Community 3, no. 4 (1992), p. 1.

  71. See, for instance, Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), p. 39.

  72. Ascione, “Children Who Are Cruel to Animals,” p. 232.

  73. Lunde, Murder and Madness, pp. 53, 56. Jane Caputi challenges Lunde’s assertion that this occurs only in rare individuals, she sees it instead as constitutive of “the age of sex crime.” Jane Caputi, The Age of Sex Crime (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1987).

  74. Conversation, September 1993.

  75. See Wendy Doniger, “Diary,” London Review of Books, September 23, 1993, p. 25.

  76. See Susanne Kappeler, “Animal Conservationism and Human Conservationism,” in Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan, eds., Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995).

  77. David Levinson, Family Violence in Cross-cultural Perspective (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989), p. 45, cited in Ascione, “Children Who Are Cruel to Animals.”

  78. See Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

  79. See Noske, Humans and Other Animals.

  80. bell hooks, “Feminism and Militarism: A Comment,” in Talking Back (Boston: South End Press, 1989), p. 97. She in turn is quoting Patty Walton, “The Culture in Our Blood.”

  Chapter 9

  1. Kathy and Bob Kellogg, Raising Pigs Successfully (Charlotte, VT: Williamson Publishing, 1985), p. 110.

  2. Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silences (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1979).

  3. Kellogg, Raising Pigs Successfully, p. 13.

  4. Ibid., p. 109.

  5. These descriptions of malestream thinking are derived from Lorraine Code, What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 150–51.

  6. Joan Ullyot, Women’s Running (Mountain View, California: World Publications, 1976), p. 78.

  7. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), p. xiii.

  8. Cuthbert Simpson and Walter Russell Bowie, The Interpreter’s Bible (Genesis) (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1952).

  9. Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961, 1972), p. 60.

  10. James Barr, “Man and Nature—the Ecological Controversy and the Old Testament,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1972, p. 22.

  11. Quoted in Barr, “Man and Nature,” p. 23. Barr adds parenthetically, “a different Hebrew word indeed, but there is no reason to suppose that this makes much difference.”

  12. Ibid., p. 23.

  13. Simpson and Bowie, The Interpreter’s Bible (Genesis), p. 486. Cuthbert Simpson’s explanation is that verse 29 may have been an addition to P’s original narrative, containing the classical conceptualization of the Golden Age—which was seen as vegetarian and peaceful between humans and animals—and so it is more linked to the visions of Isaiah 11:6–8; 65:25; Hosea 2:18. Thus it posits potentiality rather than reality.

  14. Barr, “Man and Nature,” p. 21. Jean Soler agrees with Barr’s conclusion, stating “meat eating is implicitly but unequivocally excluded” and that the reason for this has to do with the way that God and humans are defined in Genesis 1:26 by their relationship to each other. Jean Soler, “The Dietary Prohibitions of the Hebrews,” New York Review of Books, June 14, 1979, p. 24. See also Rabbi Alfred S. Cohen, “Vegetarianism from a Jewish Perspective,” Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society 1, no. 2 (1981), pp. 38–63.

  15. Anthony Phillips, Lower than the Angels: Questions Raised by Genesis 1–11 (Bible Reading Fellowship, 1983), p. 48.

  16. Soler, “The Dietary Prohibitions of the Hebrews,” p. 24. See also Abraham Isaac Kook, “Fragments of Light: A View as to the Reasons for the Commandments,” in Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence, The Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems, trans. Ben Zion Bokser (New York: Paulist Press).

  17. Samuel H. Dresner, The Jewish Dietary Laws. Their Meaning for Our Time, revised and expanded edition (New York: Rabbinical Assembly of America, 1982), pp. 21, 26.

  18. Ibid., p. 22.

  19. Ibid., p. 24.

  20. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman’s Bible: Part One (Seattle: Coalition Task Force on Women and Religion, 1974 reprint of 1898 edition), p. 91.

  21. See Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, p. xv.

  22. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1984), p. 6.

  23. It is here, in the conflict between history and eschatology, for those concerned with Christian feminist ethics, that I would place a Christology of vegetarianism. This Christology is not concerned with whe
ther Jesus was or was not a vegetarian just as feminist theology rejects the relevance that the twelve disciples were men. This is not a quest for historical duplication but for the acquisition of an ability to discern justice-making according to the Christological revelation. With this perspective we would come to see that a piece of flesh turns the miracles of the loaves and fishes on its head. Where Jesus multiplied food to feed the hungry, our current food-producing system reduces food sources and damages the environment at the same time, by producing plant food to feed terminal animals.A Christology of vegetarianism would argue that just as Jesus challenged historical definitions such as Samaritan, or undercut identities such as the wealthy man, so we are equipped to challenge the historical and individual identity of a corpse eating food habit that fosters environmental and ethical injustice.

  24. Beverly Harrison, “Theological Reflection in the Struggle for Liberation,” in Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics, ed. Carol S. Robb (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), pp. 235–36.

  25. The following quotations about the development of an ethical issue are from Sarah R. Bentley, “For Better or Worse: The Challenge of the Battered Women’s Movement to Christian Social Ethics,” (Union Theological Seminary doctoral dissertation, 1989), pp. 16–17. Those quotations with both single and double quotation marks are Bentley’s references to Gerard Fourez’s Liberation Ethics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), pp. 93, 108–9. Underlined words within the quotation marks contained this emphasis in the original source.

  26. See chapter 7, p. 137, where I first refer to this insight. Harrison, Making the Connections, p. 13. I believe Harrison’s claim is strengthened when coupled with Frye’s discussion of the arrogant eye and the loving eye.

  27. Alice Walker, “Am I Blue” in Living by the Word: Selected Writings: 1973–1987 (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), p. 5.

  28. Virginia de Araújo, “The Friend. . . . ,” Sinister Wisdom, no. 20 (1982), p. 17. See The Sexual Politics of Meat, p. 190, where I first invoked this marvelous poem.