On amazing animals and androcentric language.
February 17th, 2009 10:53 am by Kelly Garbato
This C. David Coats quote (from the preface to his 1991 book, Old MacDonald’s Factory Farm) has been floating around the animal rights blogspherz for a few weeks now. While I think Coats is dead-on in his analysis, his choice of phrasing strikes me as a little…curious, shall we say.
Take a look:
Isn’t man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife – birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes, and dingoes – by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative – and fatal – health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out a card praying for “Peace on Earth.”
In the course of his patriarchy blaming, Coats assumes the language of the very patriarchy he’s indicting. Specifically, he continually employs variants of the term mankind when he’s actually referring to humankind: man is an amazing animal; he slaughters wildlife so that he can raise and eat “food” animals; man suffers from dietary-induced health conditions, which leads man to torture millions of “lab” animals in search of cures for these self-inflicted illnesses, and so on.
In fact, Coats only switches from androcentric to gender-neutral terms near the end of the paragraph – when he transitions from describing the actions of the oppressor (man) to the consequences of these actions on other human animals. To wit: “millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition”; “[m]eanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter” (“at the absurdity of man,” natch).
Possibly, this is an unintentional example of casual sexism – i.e., Coats accidentally employed largely androcentric verbiage when writing this preface. Since this isn’t primarily a feminist blog, allow me to explain why Coats’s choice of terminology is problematic. By using language which explicitly refers to men – necessarily, at the exclusion of women – we erase women from the public sphere, from our written and oral histories, from our cultural narratives. These seemingly innocuous, male-specific terms have very real, very harmful practical consequences. Language shapes the way we think; words matter. In eliminating women from our discourse, so too do we eliminate them from our consciousness – shoving them from the public (political) to the private (domestic) sphere. “Man,” “mankind” and the like simply are not inclusive, universal terms for “men and women.” Nor is “convenience” an excuse – it’s not very hard to use “humankind” in place of “man” or “mankind,” “people” in place of “men,” etc.
More likely, though, I think Coats’s choice of words is thoughtful and intentional. As I noted above, the first half of the paragraph is front-loaded with androcentric terms: man this, he that. However, Coats quickly switches to more inclusive terms when describing the effects of man’s sins on other humans beings. Rather than a sexist slip-up, Coats’s transition from sexist to gender-neutral verbiage appears to be intentional, perhaps in an attempt to stress that man (as the primary profiteer in a patriarchy) is the oppressor, while other humans (women, children and some groups of disadvantaged men) – in addition to non-human animals – are man’s victims.
While I appreciate Coats’s intent (if this is indeed the case), I think his reasoning is misguided at best (and patronizing or outright sexist at worst). Most humans are both agents and victims of the patriarchy: precious few (men) occupy the top rungs of a hierarchy, while most everyone else – dangling precariously on the various middle rungs – are at once oppressed by those above, as they oppress those below. This goes for most everyone: men, women, children, people of color, religious minorities, LGBTQ individuals, etc. Even the most disadvantaged among us (humans) are able to exploit non-human animals, which collectively sit at the bottom of the pyramid. Just as we are all exploited, so too are we all exploiters.
Think about it: wherever women are genitally mutilated, forced into arranged or underage marriages, expected to birth babies throughout their fertile years, derided for being too feminine or not feminine enough, valued less than the fetuses in their wombs, or otherwise treated like receptacles for the male gaze, his magic seed, various bodily secretions, or outright male hatred, women still have the right to torture, enslave and slaughter animals for the most trivial of reasons, consume their corpses, wear their skins, etc.* Ditto people of color, people of lower socioeconomic statuses, children, homosexuals, transgendered people, people of disability, etc. The particulars may change, but the human privilege is always there.
In excluding women (and other marginalized groups) from the category of “oppressors,” Coats is obscuring the true nature of our relationships – to one another, to non-human animals and to the natural world around us. Truthfully, we all carry some sort of privilege, whether it’s over women, people of color, LGBTQ’s, or non-human animals (etc.). Old MacDonald (as in, The Megatheocorporatocracy (TM) formerly known as Old MacDonald) may own that factory farm, but we all reap its benefits (and consequences). We all need to check our privilege at the door.
The good news? We all have the opportunity for self-improvement, personal growth and transformation. You can start by going vegan, if you haven’t already.
Step #2: ditch the sexist/racist/homophobic/xenophobic/sizeist/ableist/speciesist language, please.
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* Hence the Sarah Palin photo at the top of this post: she was (and continues to be) the victim of countless misogynist attacks during the 2008 election cycle, yes, but she also victimizes non-human animals on both a personal (hunting, food, clothing, entertainment) and public (gov’t policy) basis.
Update, 2/17/09: Initially, I wasn’t planning on crossposting this – if I do it too often, it starts to feel like cheating – but, meh. Crossposted to.
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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare language intersections parallel oppressions animals and women sexism racism speciesism C. David Coats Old MacDonald’s Factory Farm an amazing animal violence the cycle of violence sarah palin androcentric mankind humankind feminism feminist flickr photo
