Treating Women this Way is Unacceptable; Treating Nonhuman Animals this Way is Also Unacceptable

 

Once again some ignorant asshole has offensively compared women to nonhuman animals. And once again the feminist response, unfortunately, serves to objectify other animals. I started this blog and wrote my first blog post to address a similar situation. I wrote an entire law review article focused on another.

Erick Erickson's comments are certainly offensive and should be responded to. NARAL's response rightly calls out Erickson for his appalling view of women. However, NARAL's response fails to address the underlying hierarchical paradigm that oppresses both women - as well as other marginalized humans - and nonhumans.

First, I hate to break it to NARAL, but women are animals. There is nothing wrong with that. It is only because we have so degraded animals of other species that comparisons to them are offensive. That is speciesist.

Second, NARAL's response implies that certain forms of oppression are okay but other forms are not. This is a problem not only for the individuals who are further objectified by NARAL's response, but also for the women that NARAL is attempting to defend.

There is an industry that takes pregnant female animals, tears their babies from them, and crushes them. That industry is not Planned Parenthood or the reproductive health system; that industry is animal agriculture. Over and over. Day after day. Year after year. For billions upon billions of nonhuman animals, this is the only existence they will ever know.

Erickson was actually trying to make a point about scientific research on nonhuman animals and the treatment of fetuses. His point was misguided, offensive, and misogynistic, but objectifying nonhuman animals does not help. A more productive response would be that it is the woman, not their fetuses, who are being treated the way we treat nonhuman animals in labs when conservatives deny  - or attempt to deny - women access to health care and force them to carry unwanted pregnancies.

NARAL attempts to maintain a line that makes certain forms of oppression acceptable and other forms of oppression unacceptable. Unfortunately, no one has given NARAL or other feminists the authority to police that line. As long as the line exists - as long as some sort of hierarchy is seen as appropriate - there will always be people who place women (or Blacks, or gays, or transgender people, or disabled people, etc.) on the other side of the line. The problem is the line. The problem is the belief that some forms of oppression and exploitation are ok. Deciding that certain members of our community are not entitled to dignity and respect is not okay. Treating women this way is not okay. And treating nonhuman animals this way is not okay either.

bell hooks wrote:

I believe that violence is inextricably linked to all acts of violence in this society that occur between the powerful and the powerless, the dominant and the dominated. While male supremacy encourages the use of abusive force to maintain male domination of women, it is the Western philosophical notion of hierarchical rule and coercive authority that is the root cause of violence against women, of adult violence against children, of all violence between those who dominate and those who are dominated. It is this belief system that is the foundation on which sexist ideology and other ideologies of group oppression are based; they can be eliminated only when this foundation is eliminated.

 We need to fight for a world that is safe for animals of all species; then we will have a world that is safe for women and humans of all types.