Animals and Women

It's no accident that I have made the transition from dealing with Animal Rights to Women Rights. I did it intentionally because I believe there is an interesting link of oppression between the two. In my undergrad, I read I book by Gerda Lerner called The Creation of Patriarchy. In it, she talks about the origins of female oppression in developing civilizations of the past, mainly focusing in the Middle East.

She writes about the link between the domestication and husbandry of animals to the violence and domination of women.

"Thus, Susan Brownmiller sees man's ability to rape women leading to their propensity to rape women and shows how this has led to male dominance over women. Elizabeth Fisher ingeniously argues that the domestication in animals taught men their role in procreation and that the practice of forced mating of animals led men to the idea of raping women (45 Lerner)."

While Lerner believes while these are interesting explanations, they are pretty simple explanations and cannot alone be the reason for the domination of women. I agree with her, I believe the rise of the agricultural society could be an answer in women's oppression. The domesticating animals, shift in the division of labor and the "death" of the goddess are all powerful contenders in this argument.

If we fast forward to today and deal with Peta, one of the world's largest animal rights organizations, we'll see that the link between animals and women is slightly warped. I believe Peta is oppressing the image and the sexuality of women for shock value in a half-assed attempt to save animals. Bold claim, I know, but all you have to do is Google Image "Peta" and you'll find this:

Sex sells, right? These images shock us into thinking: "Maybe meat/fur isn't for me!" This, I doubt. I can't help but think that women aren't impressed by these images and men are really impressed! So impressed, that these images are a new source of pornography. Pleasuring one part of the man's brain won't necessarily shut down his desire for meat.

Oh wait, but what about this one. . .

Can't even enjoy these ads because you're impotent? Stop eating meat!

And then the ads take a strange violent turn.

These images harken back to 70's sexploitation films like "Women in Cages." I understand that there are animals being beaten, chained and caged. I don't like that at all! Do you know what I think might be more effective? Seeing the evidence of those animals in captivity. I believe that you can get those photos and expose the atrocities to the world. People will be moved by those images. These images. . . leave me feeling confused. Am I supposed to be turned on by this?

But you might be wondering: What about the men?

They're around, but you might notice something about their images: They're at least wearing pants

Now look at another famous tattoo artist, Kat Von D.

Why does she have to completely naked?
Why does Peta have to save women at the cost of women? What's the point of this ad campaign? Men are allowed to look at these images and there's no real evidence that they will stop eating meat or wearing fur. So they are, in fact, having their flesh and eating it too. Does this ad campaign change women's minds about wearing fur and eating meat? I can't see how they would. Bombarding us with sex doesn't really raise the problem of animal abuse.

After scrolling for so many pages on Google Images, I got bored with the semi-nude photos and eventually had to type in: "Peta+animals" just to find this:

Now isn't this what we're fighting for? Don't get distracted from the real face of animal cruelty.