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.
1
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
2
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.
3
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.
4
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.
6
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)
14
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.
15
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
16
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].”
17
(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.
18
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.
20
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.
21
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.
23
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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