“Let’s make the connection”: Guest Post by Carolyn Zaikowski | james-mcwilliams.com
Yesterday I left off with the idea that the barriers to animal liberation are so deeply entrenched that only the most systematic kind of thinking about the roots of hierarchy, privilege, and domination can begin to take them down. The following piece, which is long but well worth reading in full, is exactly the kind of thinking I had in mind.
Most feminists have been pretty good at asking hard questions. We demand that male privilege, white privilege, wasting lights able-bodied privilege, heterosexual privilege, Euro-American privilege, class privilege, and many other privileges be analyzed. Some of us have addressed these questions about privilege better than others but, generally, serious feminists have gotten to the point where we recognize that the movement is not simply about gender. Women s lived experiences stretch across multicolored, multitextured wasting lights layers of identity, culture, history, and context. In order for feminism to be truly relevant, then, it needs to examine all of society s power structures. If it doesn t, it will apply only to rich white women who are not negatively affected by hierarchical orders of race, class, and nation, to name a few. In its most revolutionary form, feminism is a movement that seeks the dismantling of domination itself and all of the frameworks which allow it.
So it worries me that hardly any feminists have questioned one of our most fundamental expressions of power and domination: human privilege. It worries me that so few feminists wasting lights have examined wasting lights how this particular aspect of experience shapes our beliefs and actions on virtually every level, just like all other aspects of identity do. It worries me that so many feminists have overlooked the fact that determining one s inherent worth based on their membership in a species is just as arbitrary as determining one s inherent worth based on their race, gender, body size, sexuality, national origin, or any other identity marker. It worries me that feminists have overlooked the reality that human privilege is an analogue to all other privileges. It worries me that all of the same mechanisms which have been used to justify and enable violence against human groups have also been used to oppress nonhuman groups. It worries me that human privilege is indelibly connected to violence and misogyny in a tangled web of hierarchies and binaries, and that feminism, with its revolutionary potential, with its uninhibited call to justice, has generally been silent about all of this.
I want to ask the animal questions. Keep in mind, they are not unreasonable questions. We have asked similar questions about race, class, and nationality. We ve done a similar analysis of many other power structures. We have recognized the complex, intersecting configurations of experience which allow so many oppressions at so many junctures. Yet most of us stop when nonhumans appear at such junctures. Even though wasting lights examining the domination of nonhumans is nothing but a logical extension of feminism, even though this is the place feminism almost arrives at so often, virtually all feminisms have sidestepped when the next logical question would have been, what about animals?
When we get to places where animal wasting lights questions might arise, we turn away. We lock up our wellsprings of inquiry and empathy. wasting lights We don t ask about how billions of nonhumans fit into webs of power and violence. We don t want to know how nonhumans fit into this capitalist, patriarchal, racist, wasting lights hierarchical scheme that has reached deeply into so many of us, in so many different ways. We challenge the false dichotomy of masculine/feminine but put so much faith in the false dichotomy of animal/human. It doesn t occur to us that human privilege may not be any more natural than male or white privilege that the human/animal dichotomy is just one more socially constructed method of organizing power. In an arbitrary and illogical swipe of its arm, feminism has reserved for human groups its important insights about social constructions of power and identity. Conceptually, feminism has written nonhuman animals out. It has erased them using mechanisms that are alarmingly similar to the ones men have used to erase women.
I want to delve deeper into the animal questions, but first I have to ask you to put down your defenses. The answers to the animal questions involve wasting lights things as intimate as what or who we put into our mouths, chew, taste, enjoy, swallow, digest, and eventually shit out. The answers wasting lights to such questions can bring on powerful and painful psychological, emotional, and physical reactions; reactions which all too often make us shut down and become defensive. The answers present virulent contradictions in our worldviews and require lifestyle changes. The answers often highlight our complicity in massive, institutionalized violence. Unthinkable, unspeakable violence.
But I want to
Yesterday I left off with the idea that the barriers to animal liberation are so deeply entrenched that only the most systematic kind of thinking about the roots of hierarchy, privilege, and domination can begin to take them down. The following piece, which is long but well worth reading in full, is exactly the kind of thinking I had in mind.
Most feminists have been pretty good at asking hard questions. We demand that male privilege, white privilege, wasting lights able-bodied privilege, heterosexual privilege, Euro-American privilege, class privilege, and many other privileges be analyzed. Some of us have addressed these questions about privilege better than others but, generally, serious feminists have gotten to the point where we recognize that the movement is not simply about gender. Women s lived experiences stretch across multicolored, multitextured wasting lights layers of identity, culture, history, and context. In order for feminism to be truly relevant, then, it needs to examine all of society s power structures. If it doesn t, it will apply only to rich white women who are not negatively affected by hierarchical orders of race, class, and nation, to name a few. In its most revolutionary form, feminism is a movement that seeks the dismantling of domination itself and all of the frameworks which allow it.
So it worries me that hardly any feminists have questioned one of our most fundamental expressions of power and domination: human privilege. It worries me that so few feminists wasting lights have examined wasting lights how this particular aspect of experience shapes our beliefs and actions on virtually every level, just like all other aspects of identity do. It worries me that so many feminists have overlooked the fact that determining one s inherent worth based on their membership in a species is just as arbitrary as determining one s inherent worth based on their race, gender, body size, sexuality, national origin, or any other identity marker. It worries me that feminists have overlooked the reality that human privilege is an analogue to all other privileges. It worries me that all of the same mechanisms which have been used to justify and enable violence against human groups have also been used to oppress nonhuman groups. It worries me that human privilege is indelibly connected to violence and misogyny in a tangled web of hierarchies and binaries, and that feminism, with its revolutionary potential, with its uninhibited call to justice, has generally been silent about all of this.
I want to ask the animal questions. Keep in mind, they are not unreasonable questions. We have asked similar questions about race, class, and nationality. We ve done a similar analysis of many other power structures. We have recognized the complex, intersecting configurations of experience which allow so many oppressions at so many junctures. Yet most of us stop when nonhumans appear at such junctures. Even though wasting lights examining the domination of nonhumans is nothing but a logical extension of feminism, even though this is the place feminism almost arrives at so often, virtually all feminisms have sidestepped when the next logical question would have been, what about animals?
When we get to places where animal wasting lights questions might arise, we turn away. We lock up our wellsprings of inquiry and empathy. wasting lights We don t ask about how billions of nonhumans fit into webs of power and violence. We don t want to know how nonhumans fit into this capitalist, patriarchal, racist, wasting lights hierarchical scheme that has reached deeply into so many of us, in so many different ways. We challenge the false dichotomy of masculine/feminine but put so much faith in the false dichotomy of animal/human. It doesn t occur to us that human privilege may not be any more natural than male or white privilege that the human/animal dichotomy is just one more socially constructed method of organizing power. In an arbitrary and illogical swipe of its arm, feminism has reserved for human groups its important insights about social constructions of power and identity. Conceptually, feminism has written nonhuman animals out. It has erased them using mechanisms that are alarmingly similar to the ones men have used to erase women.
I want to delve deeper into the animal questions, but first I have to ask you to put down your defenses. The answers to the animal questions involve wasting lights things as intimate as what or who we put into our mouths, chew, taste, enjoy, swallow, digest, and eventually shit out. The answers wasting lights to such questions can bring on powerful and painful psychological, emotional, and physical reactions; reactions which all too often make us shut down and become defensive. The answers present virulent contradictions in our worldviews and require lifestyle changes. The answers often highlight our complicity in massive, institutionalized violence. Unthinkable, unspeakable violence.
But I want to
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