Linking Sexism and Speciesism1

(forthcoming in Hypatia)Jason Wyckoff

University of Utah

Abstract:

Some feminists and animal advocates defend what I call the Linked

Oppressions Thesis, according to which the oppression of women

and the oppression of animals are linked causally, materially,

normatively, and/or conceptually. Alasdair Cochrane offers

objections to each version of the Linked Oppressions Thesis and

concludes that the Thesis should be rejected in all its forms. In

this paper I defend the Linked Oppressions Thesis against

Cochrane’s objections as well as objections levelled by Beth

Dixon, and argue that the failure of these objections illuminates

the idea of linked oppressions as well as misunderstandings of

the Linked Oppressions Thesis, and may provide guidance to

philosophers theorizing animal rights from a feminist

perspective.

1 A version of this paper was presented at Wayne State University; I would like to thank those who attended that session for their very insightful criticisms and comments. I would also like to thank Peter Higgins, Theresa Tobin, Rebecca Tuvel, and two anonymous Hypatia reviewers for their detailed and helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper.

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1. The Linked Oppressions Thesis

There are two ways in which feminist philosophy can inform a

theory of animals’ oppression. First, a particular feminist

approach to theorizing women’s oppression might be adapted to

develop an account of animals’ oppression, the thought being that

women’s oppression and animals’ oppression are structurally

similar in ways that allow the latter to be illuminated by a

theory developed primarily to address the former. Second, a

feminist approach that is attentive to the existence of linked

oppressions—oppressions along different dimensions, such as

gender and race, or along the same dimension but across different

cultural or geographic contexts, that may be shown to have a

common basis or to reinforce or intensify each other—might be

used in an attempt to link the actual oppression of women and the

actual oppression of animals. The goal of such a project would be

to reveal the ways in which these two apparently different forms

of oppression depend upon and mutually reinforce each other.

It is possible to use feminist insights fruitfully in both

of these ways to shed light on the oppression of non-human

animals, but here I will focus mainly on the issue of linked

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oppressions. Many other theorists have attempted to demonstrate

the precise ways in which the oppression of women and the

oppression of animals are entangled and interdependent, and it is

not my objective either to summarize their arguments in detail or

to develop an alternative view from the ground up.2 Instead, I

will address a series of objections to the thesis that women’s

oppression is linked to animals’ oppression in order to lend

indirect support to several compatible variants of that thesis

(henceforth the Linked Oppressions Thesis). I will focus

primarily on Alasdair Cochrane’s (2010, 117-23) and Beth Dixon’s

(1996) objections to approaches that use one or more of the

following ideas to link the oppression of women and the

oppression of animals (supplementing Cochrane’s objections with

others where appropriate): (1) man’s domination of nature; (2)

the valorization of meat-eating; (3) objectification of women and

animals—particularly through the legal institution of property.3

2 See, e.g., Tuvel, 2013; Glasser, 2011; Adams, 2010; Kheel, 2007, 2004; Slicer, 2007; Bailey, 2005; MacKinnon, 2004; Nibert, 2002; Dunayer, 2001 (esp.157-61); Kappeler, 1995; Gaard, 1993; Gruen, 1993; Warren and Cheney, 1991; Warren, 1990.3 Cochrane also considers the thesis that women and animals are oppressed through similar linguistic practices. I do not consider his objections to thatview in this paper, partly for reasons of space but partly because my own thesis can be established without consideration of that issue.

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I hope to show that these objections fail in ways that reveal

some interesting features of the Linked Oppressions Thesis. More

specifically, I aim to demonstrate that there are at least four

versions of the Thesis, and that the inclination to reject it may

often be rooted in confusion about which version is actually

being offered.

Before proceeding further, it is worth taking a moment to

reflect on why the Linked Oppressions Thesis, if it can be

established, is significant and worth exploring. There are at

least three reasons: first, if the Linked Oppressions Thesis is

true, the liberation of women and of animals might, in practice,

depend on addressing women’s oppression and animals’ oppression

as a bundled political problem rather than as independent,

discrete forms of oppression. (The same is true of any other

linked oppressions that we might locate.) Second, the issue of

animal rights4 is frequently dismissed by many on the Left who

4 Since some feminists may balk at the notion of “rights,” (see, e.g. Kheel, 2007) I should say that I use ‘right’ to refer to a pro tanto moral claim (a) toor against some action performed by a moral agent, or (b) against a disadvantageous social status, or (c) to consideration in the distribution of some social good or goods. Thus, the expression “animal rights” is used here to refer simply to a position according to which animals are the subjects of such moral claims, and nothing more robust than that. For a feminist defense of rights in animal ethics, see Kelch, 2007.

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claim to care about social justice across a range of systems of

domination and oppression, and therefore it is important as a

theoretical and a practical matter for defenders of animals to

dispel this belief among potential political allies in order to

open up the possibility of productive coalitions that adopt a

comprehensive approach to social justice and political advocacy.

Third, insufficient sensitivity to the Linked Oppressions Thesis

frequently leads feminist activists and animal activists to adopt

tactics that reinforce the oppression of animals and women,

respectively. If, for example, animal activists were to make the

connection between sexism and speciesism, they might be less

likely to launch sexist campaigns in defense of animals—such as

PETA’s “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign, or the

organization’s XXX website—that exploit one form of oppression in

order to raise awareness of another. The Linked Oppressions

Thesis recommends a more comprehensive approach to social justice

and political activism.

2. Sexism, speciesism, and linked oppressions

5

In what follows, I will assume structural accounts of both

sexism and speciesism, which is to say that neither term is used

here to refer simply to a psychological prejudice (against women,

against animals). While many people harbor such prejudices, and

therefore may properly be called sexists or speciesists, my focus

here is not on “the sexist” nor “the speciesist,” but rather on

sexism and speciesism as ideologies—systems of socially shared

beliefs and practices that legitimate some actual or desired

social order.5 In order to foster precision in the defense of the

Linked Oppressions Thesis, I offer the following definitions:

Sexism: a system of socially shared beliefs and/or practices

in which:

(a) any individual S whose physical features are used

to mark her as a woman is, in virtue of being so

marked, generally thought to be someone who ought to

occupy certain kinds of social position that are in

5 In so defining ‘ideology’, I closely follow Nibert (2002, p. 8). Nibert’s account of oppression and ideology closely follows Iris Young’s (1990) account. For an application of Young’s theory of oppression to animals, see Gruen, 2009.

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fact subordinate (and this marking motivates and

justifies S’s occupying such a position), and

(b) satisfying (a) plays a role in S’s actual

systematic subordination.6

Speciesism: a system of socially shared beliefs and/or

practices in which:

(a) any individual S whose physical features are used

to mark him or her as non-human is, in virtue of

being so marked, generally thought by members of a

human society H to be someone who ought to occupy

certain kinds of social position that in fact

systemically subordinate S’s interests to lesser

interests of humans (and this marking motivates and

justifies S’s occupying such a position in H), and

(b) the fact that S satisfies (a) plays a role in the

actual systematic subordination of S’s interests to

the lesser interests of humans, and

6 I rely heavily on Haslanger’s (2000, 42) descriptive genealogical analysis of ‘woman’ in formulating sexism in this way.

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(c) the systematic subordination of S’s interests

involves one or more of the following:

i. S has the legal status of property in H.

ii. S’s interests are not protected by any legal

rights in H.

iii. S is regarded within the dominant ideology of H

as something that may be killed for food,

clothing, sport, or the production of any

products made from the body of S.

iv. S’s pain is regarded within the dominant

ideology of H to have less moral disvalue than

the pain of humans.

v. The dominant ideology of H permits S to be bred

with other members of S’s species to produce

offspring exclusively for human use.

vi. S may be used for humans’ ends in ways that the

dominant ideology of H would regard as

impermissible if such use involved human beings

whose cognitive capacities, intelligence, or

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degree of language mastery approximated those

of S.

We should also have some clear notion of what it means for

oppressions to be “linked” in the ways in which defenders of

variants of the Linked Oppressions Thesis have in mind. Here, we

must settle for something less than absolute precision, since (a)

ordinary usage of ‘linked’ implies a connection between two

objects or ideas, but little more than that, and (b) there are a

number of ways in which theorists working in this area of

attempted to specify the character of the link between sexism and

speciesism, and I intend the expression “linked oppressions” to

be compatible with a range of thick specifications of the content

of that concept. I suggest the following disjunctive analysis:

Two forms of oppression A and B are linked just in case:

(a) There is a contingent causal connection between

manifestations of A and manifestations of B such that the

former, historically, have tended to bring about,

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intensify, or reinforce the latter, or vice versa (call

this a causal link); or

(b) The material and/or social conditions for

manifestations of A and the material and/or social

conditions for manifestations of B are (contingently)

substantially similar, such that B is likely to exist

whenever A exists, or vice versa (call this type of link

common material conditions); or

(c) The normative ground of A and the normative ground of B

are substantially similar, such that attempted

justifications of A would, if sound, also serve as

justifications of B, or vice versa (call this type of

link common justification); or

(d) It is analytically true that instances of A are also

instances of B, since the concept of A is contained

within the concept of B, or vice versa (call this a

conceptual link).

Given this analysis of linked oppressions, two forms of

oppression can be linked either contingently (as in causal links,10

common material conditions, and some and some versions of common

justification), or necessarily (as in cases of conceptual links

and, sometimes, common justifications). But whenever two forms of

oppression A and B are linked, it is at least likely, if not

necessary, that the liberation of those who are oppressed through

A will be accompanied by the liberation of those who are

oppressed through B. This will be true because:

(e) The causal connections between A and B make it less

likely that those oppressed through B will continue to be

oppressed if A ceases to operate; or

(f) The common material conditions for A and B make it

likely that if A is abolished or ceases to operate

(through a removal of the material conditions for A),

then B will cease to operate as well (since its material

conditions have also been removed); or

(g) The exposure of the normative illegitimacy of A is

likely to be accompanied by the exposure of the normative

illegitimacy of B; or

(h) The liberation of those oppressed through A logically

entails the liberation of those oppressed through B.11

This should give us a clear enough picture of sexism,

speciesism, and linked oppressions for present purposes. I now

turn to Cochrane’s objections to the Linked Oppressions Thesis,

starting with his objections to the “domination of nature”

variant of the Thesis.

3. The domination of nature

Western thought traditionally has drawn a distinction

between the rational and the emotional, as well as between the

civilized and the natural, and (ecofeminists argue) elevated the

“rational” and the “civilized” over the “emotional” and the

“natural”. The natural world and its component parts are regarded

as resources to be tamed, controlled, and used by rational

beings. It is worth noting that this view prevails across a

spectrum that encompasses the right-libertarian tradition

stretching back at least to John Locke and Adam Smith as well as

the Marxist tradition that regards humans as the only creatures

who provide for their needs by transforming nature through their

free and conscious labor, the hallmark of their “species-being”.

12

Feminist critics of these traditions have pointed to patriarchal

norms which dictate that women are closer to nature, citing this

as a source of women’s subordination.7 Thus, patriarchy consists

in the domination of women and nature—and animals. Catharine

MacKinnon, for example, writes:

Both women and animals are identified with nature rather

than culture by virtue of biology. Both are imagined in male

ideology to be thereby fundamentally inferior to men and

humans. Women in male-dominant society are identified as

nature, animalistic, and thereby denigrated, a maneuver that

also defines animals' relatively lower rank in human

society. Both are seen to lack properties that elevate men,

those qualities by which men value themselves and define

their status as human by distinction.8

Along similar lines, Lori Gruen observes that

7 See, e.g., Kheel, 2007; Kheel, 2004 (pp. 332-33); Birke, 1995 (esp. pp. 35-39); Jaggar 1989.8 MacKinnon, 2004, 264.

13

[r]educing animals to objects devoid of feelings, desires,

and interests is a common

consequence of the scientific mindset by which those engaged

in experimentation distance themselves from their subjects.

Ordered from companies that exist to provide “tools” for the

research business, animals’ bodies are currently bought and

sold in ways that are reminiscent of slave trading in the

United States or, more recently, Nazi experiments on

women….9

The dualism between the rational/civilized and the

emotional/natural grounds what appears to be an empirical premise

in one type of argument against animal rights, a premise

consisting in the claim that animals lack rationality. This

claim, coupled with a normative premise that only those beings

who are rational can be owed moral duties, or be claimants of

justice, is supposed to yield the conclusion that animals lack

9 Gruen, 1993, 66. Gruen also argues that a link of this type can be found in the so-called beauty industry, a consequence of which is that “[w]omen are conditioned to believe that they must alter is disguise what is undesirable—nature—at great physical, psychological, and economic expense to themselves and at immeasurable cost to animals. (Gruen, 1993, 71)

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moral status, or are not claimants of justice.10 I say that the

first premise “appears to be” an empirical one because a similar

premise has been used in a parallel argument to deny full moral

and political status to women on the ground that women are

cognitively inferior to men, which suggests that the empirical

premise of that argument either depends on a mistake, or else

involves a normative conception of “rationality” that excludes

women (and animals) by design. Thus the denial that women and

animals can be claimants of justice on grounds of cognitive

inferiority can be challenged either through a refutation of the

“empirical” premise—in other words, a demonstration of women’s or

animals’ ability to meet the threshold for “rationality” or

whatever cognitive capacity or set of capacities plays the

relevant role in the argument—or else through a refutation of the

normative premise which asserts that rationality (or the

allegedly necessary cognitive capacities) is required in order

for a being to have moral status or be a claimant of justice.

In his critique of this version of the Linked Oppressions

Thesis, Cochrane acknowledges that animals and women have both

10 For a discussion of the roles played by these premises in “the logic of domination,” see Warren, 1990.

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been oppressed by the ideological elevation of

rationality/civilization over emotion/nature but nevertheless

maintains that “these oppressions are importantly different.”

(121). He argues as follows:

After all, the oppression of women due to their

irrationality has been based on a factual error: women are

not irrational; women are not of lower intelligence; women

are not slaves to their emotions. In an important sense, the

irrationality of animals has also been exaggerated. After

all, most contemporary biologists and ethologists have

provided evidence of remarkably advanced cognitive

capacities in a whole range of species of non-human animals.

Importantly, however, none of this evidence suggests that

these animals are rational like humans. It is obviously true

that animals are not rational in the way that human beings

are rational; there is a qualitative difference in cognitive

ability between the two. Quite clearly, however, women are

rational like men.11

11 Cochrane, 2010, 121 (emphasis in original). See also Dixon, 1996, 187: “Women share with men all the relevant capacities that would allow women to

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It is important to note that Cochrane is not committed to the

view that rationality is a necessary condition for the possession

of moral status. He concludes only that the elevation of

rationality over nature could still be used to oppress animals

even though the same rationale has been shown to provide no basis

whatsoever for the subordination of women to men. In this

analysis, the focus is on the respective empirical premises of

the arguments for the subordination of women and animals.

It may be correct to say that to the extent that women’s

oppression is based on or justified by their perceived

irrationality, non-rationality, or lack of intelligence it is

based on error, or worse, willful mischaracterization. It may

also be correct to say (and for the sake of argument, we may

concede) that animals are unlike most women and most men in

regard to the cognitive capacities of each, and that humans’

distortions of animal mentality are, generally speaking, less

egregious than men’s distortions of women’s cognitive capacities

benefit from fair and equal treatment in these contexts [such as unfair hiringand promotion practices, pornography, violence against women, and pay inequities].”

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(though, as MacKinnon argues, the relevant political questions do

not turn on “likeness” to anything—more on this below). Even if

all of this is granted, however, Cochrane overlooks the fact that

the patriarchal identification of women and animals with “nature”

and the “natural” is normatively loaded—that “nature” and

“natural” are not value-neutral concepts.12 Furthermore, even

granted that the oppression of women due to their “irrationality”

was “based on a factual error,” the factual error in question is

part of the construction of a social reality in which women are

subordinate to men. It is the use of the relevant concepts that

is more important than whether or not the concepts actually track

any “natural” categories.

There is, however, a deeper problem with Cochrane’s argument

against this version of the Linked Oppressions Thesis, and that

is that Cochrane seems (at least in the passage quoted, and those

surrounding it) to diagnose women’s oppression as failure or an

unwillingness to see that women are as rational as men—in other words,

that women are like men in all morally salient respects. This

diagnosis fails to take adequate account of two important

12 See Kheel, 2007.

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feminist critiques of the rationality criterion of moral status:

first, that the criterion, while purportedly gender neutral, is

actually masculinist13, and second (and relatedly), that the

criterion takes for granted that women must be shown to be like men

in order to gain for themselves the moral and political status

that has always been men’s due. This failure bears directly on

Cochrane’s argument against the Linked Oppressions Thesis, since

once it is recognized that women need not bear the burden of

demonstrating that they are like men in order to be claimants of

justice, the fact that animals are not like humans in the way

that women are like men ceases to have force as a premise in

Cochrane’s argument. Cochrane’s view is of a type targeted by

MacKinnon on precisely these grounds:

So the question becomes: Are they like us? Animal

experimentation, using mice as men (so men don't have to

be), is based on degrees of an affirmative answer. The issue

is not the answer; the issue is, is this the right question?

13 See Bailey, 2005, for a defense of this point in the context of a discussion of linked oppressions. See also Jaggar, 1989; Kheel, 2007 (esp. pp.45-48).

19

If it is the wrong question for women—if equality means that

women define the human as much as men do—it is at least as

wrong for nonhuman animals. It is not that women and animals

do not have these qualities. It is why animals should have

to be like people to be let alone by them, to be free of the

predations and exploitations and atrocities people inflict

on them, or to be protected from them. Animals don't exist

for humans any more than women exist for men. Why should

animals have to measure up to humans' standards for humanity

before their existence counts?14

Gruen also rejects the liberal feminist conception of equality—

based on women’s equal capacity for rationality, autonomy, and

self-determination—on that ground that “[t]he liberal feminist

vision of liberation does not challenge the underlying structure

of patriarchy.”15 In short, feminists such as MacKinnon and Gruen

(along with others such as Marti Kheel16 and Deborah Slicer17) who

offer a “domination of nature” version of the Linked Oppressions

14 MacKinnon, 2004, 266.15 Gruen, 1993, 77.16 Kheel, 2007, 46-47, 50-51.17 Slicer, 2007, 108-10.

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Thesis do not think that the fact that women are “rational like

men” should serve as a basis of philosophical or political cases

for women’s liberation (though humanist feminists do typically

make the sort of argument suggested by Cochrane). And as

MacKinnon rightly observes, if the argument misses the point when

the issue is women’s liberation, then it also misses the point

when the issue is animals’ liberation.18 Since Cochrane’s

analysis focuses on the empirical claims of sexists and

speciesists and the arguments of feminists such as MacKinnon,

Gruen, Kheel, and Slicer focus on the patriarchal/speciesist

normative claim—that possession of a certain property which men

are assumed to have (such as rationality) is a necessary and

sufficient condition for the possession of moral status—

Cochrane’s objection has no force against this version of the

Linked Oppressions Thesis as it is actually articulated and

defended by feminist animal advocates.

4. The valorization of meat-eating

18 But see Johnson and Johnson, 1994 (esp. p. 112) for a defense of a competing view.

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I assume that if animals have interests in not suffering and

not being killed, then humans’ consumption of meat and other

animal products oppresses animals in fairly obvious ways, given

that most of the animals we raise and kill for food are killed

not out of anything approximating practical necessity (at least

in most contemporary contexts) but rather because we like the

taste or the convenience of animal products and foods containing

animal products. Animal agriculture (whether intensive or not)

involves the subordination of animals’ basic interests in not

being killed and not being made to suffer for the sake of

comparatively trivial human interests. What is less immediately

obvious is the patriarchal character of meat consumption. I will

concentrate here on Carol Adams’ treatment of the issue, as hers

is the most fully-developed and almost certainly the most widely

read, and is also the one addressed directly by Cochrane.19

In The Sexual Politics of Meat, Adams argues that the consumption

of meat became a central component of the structure and the

economies of many human societies.20 Those who gained control

19 In so doing, I rely mostly on Adams, 2010. But see also Gruen, 1993 (esp. pp. 71-74) and Kheel, 2004.20 Cochrane, 2010, 119; see Adams, 2010, 58.

22

over meat came to have power and status; those were the hunters,

who were usually men. On the other hand, Adams writes, “plant-

based economies are more likely to be egalitarian.”21 In fact,

there are two respects in which meat eating takes on a

patriarchal character. First, there is the identification of meat

eating with power and the identification of power with

masculinity:

People with power have always eaten meat. The aristocracy of

Europe consumed large courses filled with every kind of meat

while the laborer consumed the complex carbohydrates.

Dietary habits proclaim class distinctions, but they

proclaim patriarchal distinctions as well. Women, second-

class citizens, are more likely to eat what are considered

to be second-class foods in a patriarchal culture:

vegetables, fruits, and grains rather than meat. The sexism

in meat-eating recapitulates the class distinctions with an

added twist: a mythology permeates all classes that meat is

a masculine food and meat eating a male activity.22

21 Adams, 2010, 59.22 Adams, 2010, 48.

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Second, there is the distribution of social roles in a social

context in which these identifications are made, with women’s

role in food preparation—and women’s relation to meat and meat

consumption—taking on oppressive features in that social context:

Women are the food preparers; meat has to be cooked to be

palatable for people. Thus, in a patriarchal culture, just

as our culture accedes to the “needs” of its soldiers, women

accede to the dietary demands of their husbands, especially

when it comes to meat.23

Cochrane argues that there does not seem to be a necessary

connection between meat eating and sexism, since “it seems

perfectly possible that meat-eating could be stopped while women

remain oppressed; or for women to be liberated while animals

continued to be eaten.”24 His argument is, in essence, an

argument that there is no entailment in either direction between

23 Adams, 2010, 56.24 Cochrane, 2010, 121.

24

meat eating and sexism, or between veganism and women’s

liberation. He argues as follows:

There is nothing to suggest that societal vegetarianism

would lead to the liberation of women. For one, meat-eating

may be associated with maleness, virility, and power, but

vegetarians can surely also be misogynists. Furthermore, if

men gave up control of meat as an economic commodity, they

might retain control over the land, grain, crops and

agricultural infrastructure. Quite obviously, economic power

does not have to reside in the meat industry. On the other

side of the coin, it is also just as possible that women

could achieve political and economic power equivalent to

men, but continue to eat meat.25

Cochrane denies that there is a necessary connection between meat

eating and women’s oppression. If Adams were asserting a

conceptual link, then Cochrane’s objection would be both relevant

and persuasive. But it is neither, since the links that Adams

25 Cochrane, 2010, 122.

25

attempts to establish are contingent causal links between meat

eating and women’s oppression as well as common material

conditions which tend to give rise to manifestations of sexism

and speciesism. Cochrane’s claims that it is “perfectly possible”

that women may continue to be oppressed even if everyone stopped

consuming animals, and that women could be liberated while

animals continue to be consumed, are true in that there is

conceptual space for these outcomes; they can be imagined without

logical or even metaphysical contradiction. But as a practical

matter, it may not be so easy to achieve the liberation of one

group without the liberation of the other, and this is really the

position that Adams defends. That view is not defeated by the

conceivability of counterexamples.

Furthermore, just as Cochrane assumes humanist conceptions

of misogyny and sexism in formulating his objection to the

“domination of nature” version of the Linked Oppressions Thesis,

he assumes here that women’s liberation is to be measured in

terms of likeness to men, a measure that gynocentrists and

dominance feminists would reject. He even claims that “women’s

liberation might be better facilitated not by demolishing the

26

meat industry, but by women taking over the ownership and

management of agribusiness itself.”26 The “liberation” of women

by these means—taking control of the structures that men have

developed and used to dominate both women and non-human animals—

is a “liberation” that many feminists reject as a political

objective. (It is perhaps an objective that humanist feminists

could accept, but their feminism is, after all, humanist.)

Gynocentrists, for example, maintain that women’s oppression is

grounded a failure to appreciate what is distinctively valuable

in femininity, while dominance feminists argue that our gender

concepts are inherently hierarchical and that to be a woman is,

therefore, to be oppressed. While these represent two very

different conceptions of gendered injustice, they have in common

an opposition to the use of the master’s tools to dismantle the

master’s house in order to achieve gender justice. In assuming a

humanist conception of gender justice, Cochrane frames his

argument in terms that many feminists regard as conceptually and

normatively suspect. Since Cochrane’s objections to this version

of the Linked Oppressions Thesis rest upon a restrictive

26 Cochrane, 2010, 122.

27

conception of feminism as well as a misinterpretation of the link

being asserted, the objections do not defeat the Linked

Oppressions Thesis.

6. Objectification through property status

Several defenders of animals have pointed to animals’ status

as property as the institutional foundation of animals’

oppression. For example, Gary Francione27 writes:

Animals are our property; they are things that we own. In

virtually all modern political and economic systems, animals

are explicitly regarded as economic commodities that possess

no value apart from that which is accorded to them by their

owners—whether individuals, corporations, or governments.28

While Francione’s focus is almost exclusively on the property

status of animals, Catharine MacKinnon makes the connection

between animal commodification and women’s oppression:

27 For significant contributions to the literature, see generally Francione, 1995; Francione, 2000; Francione, 2010.28 Francione, 2000, 50.

28

In a related parallel, both animals and women have been

socially configured as property (as has been widely

observed), specifically for possession and use. Less widely

observed, both women and animals have been status objects to

be acquired and paraded by men to raise men's status among

men, as well as used for labor and breeding and pleasure and

ease. Compare beauty pageants with dog and cat shows.29

Likewise, Carol Adams identifies a parallel between the

butchering of animals and sexual violence against women:

[To account for the parallel] I propose a cycle of

objectification, fragmentation, and consumption, which links

butchering and sexual violence in our culture.

Objectification permits an oppressor to view another being

as an object. The oppressor then violates this being by

object-like treatment: e.g., the rape of women that denies

women the freedom to say no, or the butchering of animals

29 MacKinnon, 2004, 264.

29

that converts animals from living breathing beings into dead

objects.30

Finally, in regard to animals that are used as research subjects,

Lori Gruen observes:

Large corporations make enormous profits selling specialized

equipment (such as the Columbus Instruments Convulsion

Meter), restraining devices, electrically wired cages,

surgical implants, and decapitators. Animals themselves,

mass produced by corporations such as Charles Rivers, are

marketed as commodities that can be modified to consumer

specifications.31

Gruen later notes the connections between hygiene products

marketed to women and the oppression of animals on whom those

products are frequently tested, remarking that “[w]hile women are

covering up dirt and odors, masking their natural looks with

cosmetic products, and enhancing their status and elegance by

30 Adams, 2010, 73.31 Gruen, 1993, 66.

30

draping themselves in furs, animals are living and dying in

terrible pain. The real cover-up, however, is the one perpetrated

by industries that see both women and animals as manipulatable

objects.”32

Frequently, the objectification of women through association

with animals and animals’ socially defined roles is criticized in

such a way that the criticism further reinforces animals’

subordination. Consider, for example, the anger directed at

Georgia state representative Terry England, who in the course of

speaking in favor of a bill that would outlaw an abortion after

20 weeks even if the woman is in question is carrying a stillborn

fetus or a fetus that is not expected to live to term, said,

“Life gives us many experiences…I’ve had the experience of

delivering calves, dead and alive. Delivering pigs, dead or

alive. It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.”33

England was vigorously and justifiably criticized for his lack of

even a minimal level of concern for women’s reproductive

autonomy, but few critics noted the injustice in humans’

32 Gruen, 1993, 71.33 http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/03/12/442637/georgia-rep-compares-women-to-animals/?mobile=nc

31

treatment of female cattle and pigs as reproductive machines. The

assumption shared by England and a majority of his critics is

that non-human animals may be treated this way because they are

significantly inferior to humans. The comparison of women to

cattle and pigs denigrates women precisely because the

subordination of animals is taken for granted by all human

parties. This is but one way in which, as MacKinnon writes,

“[w]omen in male-dominant society are identified as nature,

animalistic, and thereby denigrated, a maneuver that also defines

animals' relatively lower rank in human society.”34

Cochrane argues that while animals and women have both been

objectified, “the connections between their objectifications are

less clear.”35 In regard to the legal status of women and

animals, Cochrane argues that there are important

dissimilarities:

Women are full legal persons under the law in most

societies, with all of the rights and responsibilities that

flow from that. Women may still be treated or thought of as

34 MacKinnon, 2004, 264.35 Cochrane, 2010, 122.

32

objects by some men, but they manifestly are not objects.

Animals, on the other hand, remain very much as objects

under the law. The law of modern societies confirms their

status as property, thus sanctioning their

objectification.36

Bracketing, for present purposes, questions about what it means

to be a “full legal person” and whether women have this status

“in most societies,” Cochrane seems to be assuming that these

linked oppressions need to exhibit a tight structural similarity

in order to be linked, but that is not true; they may simply be

mutually reinforcing and, in some interesting respects, more or

less structurally similar. Moreover, “objectification” represents

too simplistic an understanding of what is supposed to be going

on in the cases of sexism and speciesism. Both may involve

objectification to one degree or another, but women and animals

can be constructed as subordinate in other ways too; consider,

for example, a series of studies run by philosopher Joshua Knobe

and others to test the hypothesis that pornography objectifies

36 Cochrane, 2010, 122.

33

women—causing men (and women) to view women more like objects

than like persons. In one of the studies, the experimenters

presented male and female participants with photographs of women

who were clothed, or naked but not sexualized, or depicted in a

sexualized pose. What the experimenters found was that as the

body becomes more salient in a representation of a woman, the

reported perception becomes not one of an object, but one of a

person in whom certain features become exaggerated and others

muted. Rather than objectification, Knobe writes, “we seem to be

getting something that might be called animalification—treating a

woman as though she lacks the capacity for complex thinking and

reasoning, but at the same time, treating her as though she was

even more capable of having strong feelings and emotional

responses.”37 Knobe and his colleagues conclude that institutions

like pornography do not, strictly speaking, objectify women so much

as construct women’s subjectivity in ways that deemphasize

rationality and emphasize emotion.

Similarly, the construction of animality involves some

degree of objectification in many instances, but the overall

37 http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/experiments-in-philosophy/201111/does-pornography-treat-women-objects (emphasis in original).

34

situation turns out to be quite a bit more complex. “Pets,” for

example, are property, but their subordination amounts to

something very different from simple objectification. Francione,

who takes a fairly nuanced view of the status of commodified

animals writes:

Animal property is, of course, different from the other

things we own in that animals, unlike cars, computers,

machinery, or other commodities, are sentient and have

interests…It costs money to protect animal interests. As a

general matter, we spend money to protect animal interests

only when it is justified as an economic matter—only when we

derive an economic benefit from doing so.38

In Francione’s view, animals are not, precisely speaking,

objectified by the institution of property, since the maximization

of their economic value requires the recognition that animals are

subjectively aware and can suffer. His position is that the law

treats animals’ capacity to suffer as morally significant only

38 Francione, 2010, 27.

35

when their suffering comes at a cost to their human owners. It

might be more accurate to say that animals are instrumentalized

rather than objectified, a claim that feminists often make with

respect to women and their bodies.39 It seems safe to say, then,

that on the best accounts of women’s and animals’ legal and

political status, neither women nor animals are—in a strict sense

—objectified. In both cases, things are more complex.

That complexity is what Beth Dixon suggests is overlooked in

Carol Adams’ account of the similarity between men’s exploitation

of women as sex objects and humans’ exploitation of animals for

food:

Because Adams collapses the differences between animal

intentionality and human intentionality by characterizing

animals as persons, she makes it easier for us to make

comparisons of similarity between women and animals, as

demonstrated by the remark that women are exploited as sex

objects in the same way that animals are exploited for food.

However, the comparison between these two kinds of

39 For a discussion of this point situated in a version of the Linked Oppressions Thesis, see Tuvel, 2013 (pp. 267, 276).

36

exploitation is not close enough to tell us why it is

morally objectionable to treat animals in the way they are

treated in most factory farms, nor does this comparison

constitute a compelling philosophical argument against meat

eating.40

It may be the case that Adams does oversimplify the moral

connection as Dixon suggests; I will not attempt to settle that

issue here. What I do wish to point out is that Dixon interprets

Adams (rightly or wrongly) as defending a common justification

version of the Linked Oppressions Thesis—that the exploitation of

women and animals is given a similar justification and that both

forms of exploitation turn out to be wrong for the same reasons.

But as I argued with respect to Cochrane’s view, acknowledgment

of the complexity of women’s and animals’ exploitation is

compatible with the Linked Oppressions Thesis, provided that the

asserted link is not a conceptual one or a common justification,

but rather the existence of common material conditions or a

40 Dixon, 1996, 190.

37

contingent causal relationship between the two forms of

oppression.

And in fact, the link is best conceived in one of these two

ways. What is common to the status of women and non-human animals

under the law is (1) the less-than-full consideration of their

interests at both the legislative and judicial levels of the

criminal and civil law, and (2) the institutionalized

subordination of both groups by a legal system that, as Marxist

and critical legal theorists have argued, functions primarily to

maintain (or worse, to exacerbate) existing disparities of

power.41 Consider MacKinnon:

Under law, rape is a sex crime that is not regarded as a

crime when it looks like sex. The law, speaking generally,

defines rape as intercourse with force or coercion and

without consent. Like sexuality under male supremacy, this

definition assumes the sadomasochistic definition of sex:

intercourse with force or coercion can be or become

consensual. It assumes pornography’s positive-outcome-rape

41 See, e.g., MacKinnon, 1989.

38

scenario: dominance plus submission is force plus consent.

This equals sex, not rape. Under male supremacy, the

elements “with force and without consent” appear redundant.

Force is present because consent is absent.42

Compare this analysis of the legal category of rape with

Francione’s claim that “[a]s a general matter, we spend money to

protect animal interests only when it is justified as an economic

matter—only when we derive an economic benefit from doing so.”43

The male supremacist legal category of rape and the speciesist

legal “protection” of animals’ interests share a key feature: the

interests to be protected (women’s autonomy and freedom from

physical and psychic violation, animals’ freedom from suffering

and death) are conceptualized within a dominant ideology that

subordinates those interests to the interests of a dominant

social group: men in one case, human beings in the other.

We can now see that what is at issue is the existence of

common material conditions—specifically, the categories employed

by the Anglo-American legal system which marginalize the

42 MacKinnon, 1989, 172.43 Francione, 2010, 27.

39

perspectives of both women and animals. This is true even though,

as Cochrane and Dixon both observe, the legal and social status

of women differs in important ways from the legal status of

animals.

7. The Linked Oppressions Thesis and Feminist Theory

Cochrane concludes that while some feminist scholars “have

done important work in outlining some of the interesting

similarities between the ways in which women and animals have

been subjugated, they have not proven that their oppressions are

intrinsically connected,” and ends his critique of the Linked

Oppressions Thesis with the observation that “it is perfectly

possible to imagine communities where animals are liberated, but

where women are oppressed; and indeed to imagine communities

where women are liberated, but animals are oppressed…In practice,

liberation for one group does not depend on or entail liberation

for all.”44

I have tried to show that the Linked Oppressions Thesis

escapes Cochrane’s objections, and at this point we can see that

44 Cochrane, 2010, 123.

40

Cochrane’s concluding remarks reveal a general reason for the

failure of his objections: all of them, with the possible

exception of the first, appear to misconstrue the alleged link

between sexism and speciesism as a logical or conceptual link. If

such a link existed, then the liberation of one group would be

strictly entailed by the liberation of the other, and Cochrane’s

assertions about what we can imagine would have force against the

Linked Oppressions Thesis. But this is not (or at least, not

usually) what proponents of the Linked Oppressions Thesis claim;

they claim instead that the link is a causal one, or a connection

having to do with the similar material conditions of the two

oppressions, or a common ground of justification or

rationalization.45 These sorts of links, if they exist, do not

generate entailment from the liberation of one group to the

liberation of the other. Likewise, they do not make it the case

that the liberation of one group “depends on” the liberation of

the other if “depends on” is supposed to be something like

entailment.

45 For a similar example that focuses on disability rather than gender, see Salomon, 2010.

41

But the liberation of one group might “depend on” the

liberation of the other in a different sense. If the two

oppressions are linked, then the liberation of one group might

depend on the elimination of its causes, including the

oppressions to which it is linked. Or it might depend on the

removal of the material conditions that enable the oppression,

which are the same material conditions that enable the other form

of oppression. Or it might depend on the exposure of

justifications of the oppression as illusory or unsound,

justifications which also serve to legitimate the oppression of

the other group. Because these senses of “dependence” invoke

social context or ethical and political principles, they will

likely have clearer implications for animal advocacy than the

conceptual sense of “dependence” assumed by Cochrane.

Consequently, sensitivity to the Linked Oppressions Thesis,

suitably interpreted, may carry with it the promise of less

sexist animal advocacy and greater attention to speciesism among

feminists.

I have also suggested at several points that Cochrane’s

identification of “feminism” with humanist feminism obscures the

42

unique ways in which other feminisms might be used to develop,

interpret, and defend the Linked Oppressions Thesis.

Gynocentrists, for example, frequently address speciesism from

the perspective of care ethics, and dominance feminists theorize

both gender and animality as inherently hierarchical and

oppressive. The former approach has received considerable

attention in feminist circles, but the latter approach—which is

newer and more radical—is particularly ripe for exploration and

further development. It may turn out that a comprehensive

dominance approach to theorizing animals’ oppression is the most

promising path toward a feminist theory of animality and animal

liberation.

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