[Please note that this version of this text has been recovered from an early draft due to a server crash. There may be a few typos and even mistakes in the following]
He yelled, ‘You murdering, Irish SCUM,
you’re an ANIMAL.
What did I say?
A murdering Irish ANIMAL’
Gerry Conlon: Proved
Innocent, emphasis in the original.
We
need to question why we become concerned about the
juxtaposition between humans and
animals. The worry is
always that those
humans are then
being relegated to an
inferior, and biologically driven, category.
Lynda Birke, Feminism, Animals and Science.
Meanings associated with the notion of the ‘species barrier’ are
resources which, historically, have provided an immensely effectual means of
oppressing individuals, groups, communities, and entire ‘races’ of human
beings. Taken as a central resource in
processes of dehumanisation, the ‘vast gulf’ thesis - the notion of a
‘bridgeless chasm’ between human beings and all the other animal categories - can be evidently full of meaning if
efficiently and effectively constructed in particular ways. For, as soon as human beings are successfully constituted as ‘animals’,
individual persons or entire groups are immediately rendered as ‘moral
inferiors’; who behave ‘just like animals’, or behave like ‘misfits’; which is
the least we expect, for example, of those we regard as ‘criminal’ and
incarcerate in prison cages, where they can remain invisibly hidden in their
inhumanity (Gordon 1976).
It perhaps should be
stressed again that it appears not to matter that, biologically,[1]
humans are animals: we understand, as
Dess & Chapman (1998) indicated in the previous chapter, that the label
‘animal’ is not automatically associated with homo sapiens - a genus of primates.
Human beings are hominids - along with chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos. More generally, with orang-utans and gibbons,
‘we’ all are apes (Hall 2001). Clearly,
extra work needs to be done for many people to comfortably recognise and calmly
acknowledge their animality or apeness.[2]
Given that human beings in
general do not apparently appreciate being called ‘animals’ (Clark 1990), the
undoubted effectiveness of dehumanisation processes, indicated by frequency of
usage, should not be underestimated since even genocide can arise as a result
of its skilful application (Bauman 1989).[3] The successful conceptualising of other human
beings as occupants of the ‘other’ (read: ‘wrong’) side of the species barrier
is unlikely to be sufficient, on its own,
to create all social conditions
necessary for genocide. Other associated
notions such as ‘distance’ and ‘indifference’, and some sort of possibly
lengthy ‘process’, as implied above, may be required also (Bauman 1989;
Reynoldson 1991; Tester 1997).
Nevertheless, both Bauman and Tester provide a good deal of evidence
which suggests quite convincingly that the employment of attitudes and
sentiments associated with the meanings attached to the idea of the species
barrier can play an important - and perhaps the most important - role in
processes of dehumanisation.[4]
In turn, processes of
dehumanisation are evidently an important – possibly a vital - dimension in the
‘lead-up’ to genocide. With respect to
the dehumanisation of whole populations, such as the dehumanisation of the Jews
in the early twentieth century, Bauman (1989) shows how rational, organised,
bureaucratic state mechanisms can effectively institute, over months and years
if necessary, a dehumanisation process which results in groups of humans being
regarded as sub- or semi-human creatures, or perceived as not being human at all. In addition to the common
physical separation of the ‘victims’ of dehumanisation from the general
population (for example, when the Nazis ghettoised the Jews), a programme of
propaganda dissemination about and
also against the victim group in
question is essential (Reynoldson 1991; Bourke 1999).
It may be that ‘postmodern’ and poststructural
thought is supposed to be posited on challenging oppositional and dualistic
constructions - and, according to Steve Baker (1996), recent academic nonhuman
advocacy has continued and furthered criticism of
Cartesian dualism, especially those of mind versus
body, human versus animal, and reason
versus emotion. Presently, in the ‘postmodern’ age, rather
than denying difference, the idea is
to celebrate it. This is all very well, yet Marti Kheel is
among ecofeminist authors to point out the continuing
dualistic nature of society (quoted in Hall 2001). Analyses such as Bauman’s investigation of
the Nazi holocaust – and the more recent experience of Kosovo and Bosnia (see
Mestrovic 1994; Robins 1994; Tester 1997) - seems to serve to point out that
the use of social power - deliberately based on dualistic thought - is still an
important empirical factor which must inform even our ‘postmodern’ thoughts:
given its prevailing utility, there seems little doubt that the human-nonhuman
dualism is still alive and kicking as well as largely unquestioned.
Attempts have been made to underscore this idea by
the use of words such as ‘successful’ in relation to dehumanisation processes:
indeed, discussing sometimes lengthy social
processes also implies that the utilisation of social power is an essential
ingredient of the overall picture. Thus,
although postmodern deconstructionism may be regarded as a valuable analytical
tool - and some would argue an element of positive advocacy[1] - it surely needs to be
recognised that persons who hold institutionalised power, and have a high
status in the hierarchy of credibility, enjoy an increased ability to construct, use and maintain any successfully constituted oppositional and dualistic
attitudes and practices.
With this in mind, this
section of the thesis details many of the instances in which a process of
dehumanisation has indeed appeared to be ‘successful’ - and with deadly
effect. In other words, these are
examples when human individuals or groups have been effectively pitched into
nonhuman categories - thus casting them ‘over’ the species barrier and into
risky ‘animal’ categories. It is
suggested that it will be emphatically clear throughout this section that
dehumanisation processes could not have their continuing value if
sociopolitical, economically-influenced socialised moral attitudes about humans
and other animals were generally not so firmly fixed. The following also
appears to give support to Bauman’s (1989) critical assertion (in contrast to,
say, Durkheimian notions that human society is a ‘morality-producing entity’)
that modern, rational, and the most bureaucratic social systems, are especially
well placed to employ dualistic thought and dehumanisation processes for brutal
political and ideological ends.
Missing from the majority
of accounts of dehumanisation processes is a recognition that the harm that may
be caused to dehumanised humans can logically only come about because nonhumans
have already been cast into ‘harmable’ categories.[1] Nonhuman animals are, a priori, ‘already in’ that necessary category. In other words, these categories have moral
and practical importance which powerful social agents - including those who
‘exercise political dominion’ (Duffy 1984: 14) - can use against their
‘enemies’ who they wish to dominate, exploit and kill. As mighty as the barrier that separated King
Kong from ‘human civilisation’, modern societies have been led to believe in
the moral implications that philosophy, religion and culture has taught about
this putative division between all humans and all other animals. As seen above, many influential philosophical,
scientific and religious voices have constructed the species barrier as a
meaningful representation of ‘us’ and ‘them’ categories, with the suggestion,
according to feminist biologist Lynda Birke, that (certainly male) human beings
belong to ‘culture’ as other animals belong to ‘nature’ (see Birke 1994).
This section, then, is primarily concerned with detailing what powerful
social actors have done with these influential constructions of ‘species’ divisions.
The Universe of
Obligation.
As suggested earlier, and as Bauman (1989: 26) has explained, what are under discussion are attitudes and practices associated to the notion of
the universe of obligation, first
conceptualised in 1979 by Helen Fein.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, and utterly logically for those who argue that rights and duties cannot but go hand
in hand,[1] this universe is usually
seen as exclusively comprised of human beings with bonds and obligations to
protect one another. Inside this
universe, moral questions seem to ‘make sense’, outside of it they are regarded
as ‘meaningless’. As suggested before,
in one sense this point is put rather too strongly in that animal welfare
ideology results in limited moral considerations extending, selectively - and
tentacle-like - into ‘outside’ zones - or ‘through’ the species barrier, as it
were. In the case of nonhuman animals,
to use Thomas’ (1983) term, some get to become morally ‘privileged’: it appears, then, that insiders to the universe of moral obligations have the ability to
co-op some categories of outsiders who are thereby afforded some little
protection from harm.
In terms of the alleged inevitable connection
between rights and duties (or obligations), duties are routinely removed from
rights formulation seen applicable to the case of very young human children, or the very elderly (often on the basis
that they may be seen as ‘potential’ or ‘past members’ of the moral
in-group). Such individuals and the
categories they form may not be seen as fully ‘active’ members of the moral
universe, yet they remain members of it. In other words, at certain times
of their lives, human beings may not necessarily
understand requirements for reciprocal duties, yet it is understood that they themselves nevertheless still require others to respect at least some of their basic protective or negative rights. At
times, then, full human rights do not always apply to all human beings –
nevertheless, their continuing status as sentient beings maintain some of their
rights, those, obviously, that are related and relevant to their sentiency. However the actual details are worked out,
and despite the frequency in which rights-duties obligations are waived, it
remains the case that society appears to understand that the benefits of the
universe of obligation are applicable to ‘insiders’ alone; and that generally
means mostly or only humans. Therefore,
as Bauman (1989: 27) explains: ‘To render the humanity of victims invisible,
one needs merely to evict them from the universe of obligation’.
Making the humanity of the
German Jews ‘invisible’ was something the Nazis excelled at, Bauman claims. Thus,
they
were evidently extremely skilful, not to mention ruthless, ‘evictors’: but no
such eviction from the universe of obligation would make much
sense without precise and fixed ethical understandings about what it means to
be on this or that side of the species barrier.
Not only is it rather useful to be able to limit the ‘social territory’
of this universe to groups of insiders and outsiders, it
must be extremely gratifying for those with the power to have an ‘outside’
territory into which troublesome insiders may be evicted.
Process.
When investigating Nazi propaganda in the second ‘world war’, Reynoldson
(1991) suggests that dehumanisation requires the frequent repetition of central
ideological themes. Adolf Hitler
apparently knew and appreciated this, claiming
in Mein Kampf that only constant
repetition will succeed in ‘imprinting’ an idea on ‘the memory of the crowd’
(in ibid.: 5). Goebbels had the task of activating Hitler’s eventual plan to destroy all Jews. This, according to Reynoldson, involved
making German feelings ‘run high’ against Jews, which was the principal aim of
the production of a whole series of anti-Jewish posters and films (ibid.:
25). What fun and intrigue Hitler and
Goebbels may have had with access to the modern
‘worldwide
web’ can only be imagined. If overtly
negative propaganda in posters and films can be thought of as rather obvious
strategies in a process of dehumanisation, Bauman (1989) outlines many of the
more subtle levels on which the process may rely if it is to ultimately succeed. Physically removing
Jewish people into ghettos, as Hitler’s followers did, is not subtle at all, of course, but before they brought this about, the Nazis carefully
sought to transform the ‘decent’, ‘nice’, ‘normal’, ‘Jew next door’ into a
serious and frightening threat to the then rapidly expanding ideological notion
of ‘Germanhood’.
In 1933, German civil
servants were employed in the task of defining what ‘non-Aryan’ should be taken
to mean: this, argues Bauman, effectively
sealed the fate of European Jewry (ibid.: 27).
The Nazis required an ‘active hostility’ to the Jews - inaction and
indifference alone would not do in this case: ‘putting Jews in their place’
needed the applause of the masses, Bauman states (ibid.: 55). Jews were demonstrably non-Aryan and their
‘Germanhood’ was questioned again and again.
However, with the application of the powerfully suggestive ‘Jews = lice’
formulation, Bauman claims that ‘the Jewish question’ was successfully, if
slowly, transformed ‘from the context of racial self-defence into the
linguistic universe of ‘self-cleansing’ and ‘political hygiene’’. With typhus-warning posters on the walls of
the ghettos (representing one step further in scare propaganda: Jews = lice =
typhus), the chemicals for the ‘last act’ were symbolically commissioned from
the ‘Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpung - the German Fumigation
Company’ (ibid.: 27).
The process of
dehumanising Jews in Germany
Given what is ostensibly
‘known’ of the plight of Jews conceptualised as nonhuman animals, what hope, then, have ‘real’ nonhumans? - for the genocide perpetrated on the Jews in the
Second World War was the mass murder of beings only claimed to be, and socially described as, nonhuman or
subhuman. They were propagandised as
‘not human’ but were not actually
nonhuman. One may have thought that the
most superficial inquiry would have given the lie to this social construction,
this blatant social fiction; but no, filthy verminous ‘animals’ the Jews
became, thus ‘killable’ they became, because that is what ‘animals’ were - as
they still are. This particular element
of influential social constructionism is
returned to later in the thesis in a consideration of interaction in the school
playground.
There is another strand to
Bauman’s ‘holocaust thesis’ which deserves recognition here. Much of what has been examined to this point
has rightly emphasised the dehumanisation of German Jewry. However, what of those who had to be convinced to directly and indirectly
engage in the genocidal processes?
Bauman (ibid.: 24) stresses that some form of the dehumanisation of the perpetrators of holocaust is just as
necessary as the dehumanisation of victims of genocide. Thus, to understand what happened to these
people, he suggests, it is essential to uncover and understand the social
mechanisms that can overcome humanity’s innate ‘animal pity’, and recognise
that conduct contrary to inborn human moral inhibitions can be socially
produced.[3] As with the production of what Bauman calls
‘moral sleeping pills’, these social processes must be capable ‘of transforming
individuals who are not ‘moral degenerates’ in any of the ‘normal’ senses, into
murderers or conscious collaborators in the murdering process’ (ibid). ‘Moral blindness’ was required in equal
measure and was evidently
successfully achieved. It may perhaps be
understandable that those involved in mass murder
benefit from a little ‘moral distance’ from genocide, just as modern nonhuman enslavers, and butchers and flesh
consumers appear to benefit from some such distance from the abattoir.
The Nazis shrewdly
achieved the necessary separation within the socially constructed context of
‘political hygiene’. Thus, ‘the
invention of first the mobile, then the stationary gas chambers; the
latter...reduced the role of the killer to that of the ‘sanitation officer’
asked to empty a sackful of ‘disinfecting chemicals’ through an aperture in the
roof of a building the interior of which he was not prompted to visit’ (ibid.:
26). Using themes similar to moral
blindness, overcoming pity, and desensitisation, medical historian Hans Ruesch
(1979) devotes a chapter of his antivivisectionist book, Slaughter of the Innocent, to what he called a process of
dehumanisation in the case of animal experimenters. In this instance, degrees
of dehumanisation are seen chiefly as a product of two factors: laboratory
routine and specialist socialisation.
More recently, in 1991,
Roger Ulrich, psychologist at Western
Michigan University
We have learned that
otherwise compassionate people can become remarkably desensitised and detached
from the suffering they inflict on animals.
We have learned that highly intelligent people can be engaged in the
most trivial or eccentric research, yet convince themselves that their work is
important (cited in ibid).
In the context of this chapter, this apparent human ability to self-convince,
or be convinced by others, is more than a little frightening and surely underlines
the value of on-going, honest, and thorough commitment to reflexivity.
Impersonal
Killing.
Keith Tester (1997) describes similar processes of dehumanisation that
can integrate ‘normal’ and ‘ordinary’ people into killing operations. Tester follows Peter Berger’s (1979) lead and
concentrates on the so-called ‘Manson Family’s’ Tate/LaBianca killings, and the
U.S. Army’s involvement in Vietnam, in particular the latter’s involvement in
the infamous My Lai massacre. Tester
notes Berger’s assertion that, generally, North Americans are statistically
most likely to kill members of their close family, or perhaps their friends and
neighbours, than they are to kill complete strangers. Generally, it is necessary for people to
receive training in order for them to kill people whom they do not personally
know.[1]
Tester comments wryly that
he is unsure whether he is comforted by such facts or not. Either way, it turns out that the killing of
some human beings is harder than the killing of others. Since neither Charles Manson nor the US Army
could rely on their charges having convenient ‘family rows’ with all their
future and many victims, detailed and prolonged ‘instruction’ was essential to
transform ‘normal’ people into the killers of strangers. Dehumanisation is absolutely central to such
training.
Berger is absolutely clear
that, in this training, ‘the victims must
be dehumanised and the killers deprived of individuality’ (Berger 1979: 122, emphasis in the
original, cited in Tester 1997: 87).
Berger was sure, says Tester, that what he termed the ‘essential
continuity’ from My Lai to Manson was that ‘both crimes consisted of impersonal killings’ (Berger, 1979: 118,
original emphasis, cited in Tester, 1997: 86).
Thus, the alleged foundations of the mechanism for killing human
strangers are identified: (1.) deprive
victims of their humanity, which (2.) makes it hard for killers to identify
with their victims, and (3.) provides killers with a way of proclaiming their
own innocence on the basis that they were following orders from some superior
authority (such as the charismatic Charles Manson or within the structured
disciplined hierarchy of the army).
The dehumanisation of
victims, incorporating the strategy of, and tendency toward, their
impersonalisation, appears to make it much easier for them to be killed. Thus, William Laws Calley, the lieutenant in
charge of the platoon which did the most killing at My Lai ,
is reported to have not regarded his particular victims as human beings.[2] Instead, they were simply ‘the enemy’, a
construction involving negative racist slurs (Tester 1997: 86) and names such
as ‘gooks’. A Vietnam veteran, using the
pseudonym ‘Harry O’Connor’, says that the ‘gook syndrome’, which led to the
Viet Cong being called ‘dinks’ and ‘zipperheads’ as well as ‘gooks’, was
prevalent in Vietnam.[3] The result: ‘I’ve seen men bat around people,
hit them on the head with rifles, act like gods, do anything they want with
human beings’ (quoted in Bourke 1999: 232).
According to Joanna Bourke, a common military tactic involves
encouraging soldiers to believe a fiction that enemies were not really human. Instead, they were animals such as baboons or
rats; they are vermin or wild beasts.[4] Similarly, Manson’s ‘Family’ also said they
did not believe they were killing human beings.
They apparently believed that they were out to take the lives of ‘pigs’
(Tester 1997: 86), although it is not made clear whether this meant that they
understood these victims as police officers, often labelled ‘pigs’ in the
1960’s and 1970’s. However, by
‘classification’, both sets of victims had their humanity successfully - if
only conceptually - taken away from them.
An important central issue
may be raised once more, one that Tester fails to address despite previously
having written a book about animal protectionism, nonhuman rights advocacy and animal
rights philosophy (Tester 1992): why should ‘successful’ dehumanisation appear
to be so effective? What is it that
makes the deprivation of ‘humanity’ status such a destructively calamitous
eventuality? Why is perceiving a human
being as nonhuman seemingly ‘enough’ to allow every vile and cruel misfortune
to come her or his way, be it discrimination, abuse, torture, and/or
elimination and collective eradication?
What is so useful about the ability to conceptually cast a human being
over the species barrier? What is so
wrong; so terribly, terribly unforgiving; so horrendous and incredibly dangerous about being on the nonhuman
side of it?
The
Dehumanisation Effect in War.
One method of dehumanising enemies is to say that they behave ‘like
animals’ and therefore this allows that the target person or population can be
treated as such. As ever, linguistic
classification is crucial here, and language is again revealed as a powerful
social institution in the construction of culturally transmitted
attitudes. For example, Bourke (1999:
229) relates the story of the 1939-45 radio broadcasts made by Sir Robert
Vansittart. Apparently Vansittart
suggested to his wartime listeners that the German public were undergoing a
dramatic process of ‘reverse evolution’ which emphasised three alleged traits
of the German psyche: envy, self-pity and cruelty. German nationals were characterised as
‘butcher birds’ who ‘felt no compunction about committing the most vile
atrocities’ (ibid). Oddly, it was also
claimed by Vansittart that German soldiers liked to machine-gun children to
death and, if they could not find children, they would turn their machine guns
onto cows.
In the Vietnamese war in
the 1960’s, the alleged war activities of the Viet Cong perhaps appeared even
more shocking due to advances in photography and the production of catalogues of
‘atrocities’ which were distributed to the press by the South Vietnamese
Embassy. It was clearly and regularly
suggested that the Viet Cong soldiers of North Vietnam behaved ‘no better than
animals’, with pictures of them killing, torturing and mutilating large numbers
of South Vietnamese people. Bourke
describes photographs that depicted ‘beheaded women, men hacked to death with
machetes, a baby whose body was ‘riddled’ with submachine-gunfire; the bodies
of priests... breasts sliced off a nurse; the corpse of a tortured teacher; and
a dead mother complete with nursing baby’ (ibid).
Bourke found that combat
soldiers who took part in several different conflicts had their ‘eagerness to
fight’ heightened by such stories and clearly many came to believe that they
were dealing with sub or nonhuman enemies.
One soldier, appalled by one of the earliest uses of gas on the Western
Front, said he grew ‘black with a deadlier hate’ which made him want to ‘kill
and kill and kill’. After that, he said, he ‘butchered savagely’ (ibid.:
230). For another soldier, all Germans
became ‘monsters’ when he learned of the concentration camps. Scott Camil, a soldier in Vietnam
Further ways of justifying
killing ‘the enemy’ was to characterise what was happening as socially accepted
forms of ‘hunting’. This could be ‘big game’ hunting or foxhunting, or through seeing oneself as ‘a
poacher’, and viewing dead enemy soldiers as part of the sporting ‘bag’ or the booty. Tank
warfare was similarly equated with hunting animals and, ironically, given the
size and noise of these machines of war, tracking people in a tank was
sometimes regarded as a form of ‘stalking’.
Even warfare at sea was characterised at times as hunting ‘prey’ and as catching the ‘quarry’ (ibid.: 233-34).
The
Meatgrinder.
Tester (1997: 88) asserts that due to their strategies of war, the North
American army in Vietnam US Vietnam North
Vietnam
In 1987, Colonel David H.
Hackworth co-wrote a book about his wartime experiences. The most decorated officer in the US
As stated above, an element present even in such repetitious
killing is the understanding that it could be ‘you’ rather than ‘them’ to be killed. It is perhaps not immediately
obvious that an extremely similar cognisance is also
present in animal slaughterhouses. For example, according to Eisnitz’s (1997) interviewees, processing speed means that many nonhuman animals on slaughter lines are frequently not stunned adequately - or not rendered unconscious at all due to error or sloppy practice - and this leaves them terrified. Many animals
are often in pain from repeated attempts to stun them, they thrash about as they hang by their legs on a moving shackle line as they are propelled toward ‘operatives’ whose job is to kill them (by ‘bleeding
them out’) with a knife. They then move
on to
other workers who must cut various body parts off or
remove skin.[1] In these often
chaotic circumstances injuries to the human
operatives, some serious and even life-threatening, may occur. Slaughter staff are
constantly wary of the dangers around them and often have weapons, such as baseball bats, to hand in case the larger
animals fall from the slaughter line. As
a consequence of all of this, as with many soldiers, a defensive ‘get them
before they get us’ mentality can emerge.
As Bourke shows in the
detail of human warfare, it appears to be the case that, when any form of
killing becomes regarded as routine activity, the act itself can become almost
forgotten. In such circumstances, other
objectives, such as simply ‘getting the job done quickly’, may emerge as the chief priority. For example, a slaughterer called Tice told
Eisnitz that what ‘pisses [him] off’ were cases in which animals would not
‘accept’ that they were ‘due’ to be killed.
Tice believes a pig should accept that ‘it is in the stick pit’ and ‘you are
going to kill it’ (quoted in Eisnitz 1997: 93, emphasis in original). Without such ‘co-operative acceptance’ - or
in actual nonhuman escape attempts judged to
break the routine and thereby threaten throughput and thus wages - individual
pigs may be regarded simply as ‘troublemakers’ (for
resisting their own deaths) and may be severely punished for it.
Tice, whose job was to
‘stick’ pigs says he once was left with a ‘live hog’ running around his work
area because she had fallen off the shackle line. As one of these uncooperative
‘troublemakers’, thus an ‘enemy’ of smooth operational efficiency, the unfortunate pig, like all enemies in the battlefield, found herself due no sympathy:
‘It would be just looking up at me and I’d be sticking, and I would just take
my knife and -errk- cut its eye out while it was just sitting there. And this hog would just scream’. He goes on:
One time I took my knife -
it’s sharp enough - and sliced off the end of a hog’s nose, just like a piece
of bologna. The hog went crazy for a few
seconds. Then it just sat there looking
kind of stupid. So I took a handful of
salt brine and ground it into his nose.
Now the hog really went nuts, pushing its nose all over the place. I still had a bunch of salt left on my hand -
I was wearing rubber gloves - and I stuck the salt right up the hog’s ass. The poor hog didn’t know whether to shit or
go blind (ibid).
Several studies, in disciplines such as sociology, history and
psychology, have attempted to make estimations of the ‘brutalisation’ effect of
involvement in harm causing. For
example, in the sociology of crime, many studies
have investigated whether the experience of military service revealed itself
at some later point in, say, crime or suicide statistics (see Bourke 1999:
356-59, 495).[2] Similarly, as noted at the outset, there has
been a good deal of recent research conducted to evaluate the assumed causal
link between nonhuman abuse and the later abuse of human beings (see Arluke et
al 1999; Ascione 1993; 1998; 1999; Boat 1995; 1999; Felthous & Kellert
1986; Kellert & Felthous 1985; Lacroix 1999; Lockwood 1999; Nibert 1994;
Rigdon & Tapia 1977).
To some extent, these
latter endeavours are again based on the Kantian notion of ‘indirect duties’
already discussed; that is, there should be a prohibition against overt cruelty
to animals due to its effect on the people doing it and on human society in
general. Thus Kant said: ‘He who is
cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealing with men’. On the other hand, ‘tender feelings towards
dumb animals develop humane feelings towards mankind’ (Immanuel Kant, quoted in
Regan 2001: 12).
Interestingly, it may be
argued that one of the main justifications for institutionalised animal
welfarism is based on such an idea.
After all, animal welfarism does not prevent the human instrumental use
of other animals. Neither does it
necessarily save nonhuman lives. Yet it
does apparently serve to convince whole populations that such exploitation can
be seen as entirely justified, largely unproblematic and effectively policed
and regulated.
Pornography.
Several of the contributors to Cathrin Itzin’s (1992) collection, Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil
Liberties, detail the frequent violent dehumanisation of - mainly but not
exclusively - women in pornography.
There is evidence that the phenomenon of
dehumanisation is common and widespread in the production of some pornography.
It is suggested that many contributions to Itzin’s book provides substance
to later assertions in this work that
socialisation processes are powerful social forces which can lead to
fundamental social values which in turn can
validate and justify the commissioning of harmful acts. In particular, just as Itzin and her
co-writers propose that what pornography ‘teaches’ people about sex is often
sexualised and eroticised violence, portrayed as if ‘this is sex’, the argument to follow states that early normative lessons in primary
socialisation, and the on-going values generated and
perpetuated by secondary and adult socialisation, go a long way in explaining human attitudes
to nonhuman animals. For many in the
animal protection movement, general socialised attitudes
‘about’ other animals – for example, when
socialisation processes assists in the
construction of human beliefs about what humans and animals are; and even produce societal
beliefs about what nonhuman animals ‘are for’ - can be seen as
one of the obstacles that their movement must overcome in
trying to explain new ideas about nonhuman-human
relations.
In relation to campaigning
strategy, Steve Baker (1998) seems entirely correct to
suggest that nonhuman advocacy has significantly benefited from feminist
writing, particularly in the 1990’s.
Although ‘ecofeminism’ has causes some controversy in feminist
philosophy,[1]
the following perspectives on pornography appear to benefit from being viewed
through Karen Warren’s (1990; 1994) ecological feminist conception of ‘the
logic of domination’.[2] Indeed, a general ecofeminist lens is useful
it seems, since writers such as Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva (1993) see
pornography as a form of ‘dissection’ because, the argument goes, many rational
modern machine-men have difficulty dealing with ‘real’ and/or ‘complete’
women. Therefore, such men prefer
pornography and perhaps sex tourism based on the exploitation, commodification
and the reduction to their sexual parts of exceptionally marginalised and generally powerless women.[3]
A strength in the ecological feminist approach, it seems, like the earlier
‘humanitarian’ stance of animal rightist Henry Salt, is its insistence on
seeing various forms of subjugation as firmly linked to and
interwoven with other modes of oppression.[4] While it perhaps
should be stated that many ‘eco-feminists’ would likely be
reluctant to use a rights formulation (although Regan [2001: 22] cites
Josephine Donovan’s claim that natural rights theory ‘presents impressive and
useful arguments for the ethical treatment of animals’), the attraction in the
present work to ecofeminist theory is precisely due to this explicit
acknowledgement of interlocking oppressions, rather than seeing eco-feminism per se as the
equivalent of animal rights thought.
It seems evident from a
perspective such as Warren’s that an instance of violent pornography (as
distinct from ‘erotica’ involving consenting participants) is an example of a
logic of domination, defined as a patriarchal prerequisite that has sustained
and justified the twin domination of women and ‘nature’ (Warren, cited in
Crittenden 1998: 249). In a great many
examples of pornography, it appears that (at least) sexism, racism and
speciesism merge and blend within a single act of ideological domination with
often excessive culturally symbolic subordination set and represented within
acts of extreme cruelty, persecution and, indeed, rights violations. For
example, Forna (1992: 105) alludes to interlocking strands when she states that
pornography sustains an entrenched belief that sex with a black women or a
black man is ‘different’ - and certainly more ‘savage’ - than sex with a white
person. More particularly, while sex
with black people is seen as ‘more physical’ than sex with white people, it is
at the same time less emotional, less spiritual and,
of course, ultimately less human:
Black women are represented in porn as synonymous with deep carnality, animal desires and uncontrolled lust... ‘Naturally’ less civilised than her white counterpart, she exists solely for sex... The words and adjectives which caption pictures of naked black women are the same words used over and over again. The black woman is described as being ‘panther-like’, possessing ‘animal grace’. She is photographed caged, chained and naked. Hers is a savage, wild and primitive, exotic sexuality: a less than human sexuality (ibid.: 104).
In relation to black men:
They are super-sexualised studs, members of a lower caste without the natural inhibitions of civilised whites. Sex between two blacks is a steamy, savage affair (ibid).
Citing research conducted in 1980 and 1981 by Teish and Leidholdt, Mayall
and Russell (1993: 167) also make the claim that black women are regularly associated
with nonhuman animals in pornography.[5] Teish notes that the lucrative pornography
industry exploits black and white women in different ways: she argues that
white women are often portrayed as ‘soft’, while black women are frequently shown as ‘ugly, sadistic, and animalistic, undeserving of human
affection’. Similarly, Leidholdt reports
that while Asian women are often portrayed as ‘dolls’, Latin women are depicted
as sexually submissive but voracious and, in arguably the most negative
portrayal, Black women are shown as ‘dangerous and contemptible sexual
animals’.[6]
Recalling the point about
dissection, Itzin herself (1992: 43) says that pornographic accounts often reduce women to ‘just’ their genital
organs, while their assumed animality is never very far away. Thus women are sometimes regarded as:
holes, slots, sluts, pieces of meat. Men can walk the streets looking for ‘slots’, look at their wives as ‘slots’. And indeed letters from male readers [to pornographic publications] describe their wives in such dehumanised and derogatory terms: as ‘groaning and moaning like a stuck pig’, with ‘gushing fannies’ and ‘sopping cunts’.
Itzin notes that much pornography shows women ‘enjoying’ being ‘used as
animals’ (seemingly assuming that animals like to be ‘used as animals’) (ibid.:
49). It is also remarkable the number of
times hunting associations and butchers’ knives find their way into
pornographic narratives (as they find their way into narratives of warfare). For example, Itzin describes scenes from a
‘snuff movie’ thus:
[A]fter a rather brutal rape, a young woman was tied to a table, and a hand was amputated with a Black-and-Decker type saw. Then she was raped again, and in the course of it her guts were spilled out by the rapist using a great butcher’s knife (ibid.: 49-50).
After viewing this particular video (obtained in Dublin), Clodagh
Corcoran of the Irish Campaign Against Pornography said, ‘I have lived in fear
ever since, knowing that while the rape, degradation and dehumanisation of
women is filmed and sold as entertainment, women’s status in society is
worthless, and our lives within and outside our homes are also without value’
(in ibid.: 50). Itzin, along with Labour
MP Clare Short, went to the Obscene Publications Branch at Scotland Yard and
found several examples of adult and child pornography involving stories such as
a pornographic cartoon about Little Red Riding Hood who is gang-raped by
several hunters and shown to ‘enjoy’ it; women being penetrated by a dog, a
donkey and a pig (while one kisses the pig’s snout);
women hung by their breasts from meat hooks and a woman being eviscerated, as
if in a slaughterhouse, and sexually murdered (ibid.: 51).
Peter Barker (1992: 134)
understands common pornographic themes of representing woman as animals or
engaged in sexual acts with animals as a clear expression of utter contempt for
women. Contempt, moreover, that ‘has to be continually reinforced in order for men to believe that
their domination of women is justified’.
After all, he says, echoing dimensions of the logic of domination thesis, and the suggestion in
the present thesis that non-human animals are socially
understood
to occupy categories of beings who can legitimately be
harmed, it is ‘weaker’, ‘lesser-than’ groups who are candidates for
exploitation: ‘there would be no justification for abusing and subordinating a
group of people who were seen as being equal and worthy of respect’
(ibid). ‘Porn’ also makes men feel good, because men in pornography are virtually always
‘sexual athletes’ and ‘studs’ whose ‘performance’ is never less than sufficient
to satisfy all the needs and more of their sexual partners. Barker also claims that pornography teaches
men that sex is something men ‘do’ to women.
In porn ‘all men have the means of feeling sexually desirable, sexually
proficient, and completely strong and powerful, even if it is just for a few
minutes’ (ibid.: 136).
There is often a fairly
conventional division of labour in pornography, even if the sex itself is often
unrealistic. While porn says men ‘do
sex’ to women - they also apparently ‘do’ the DIY
too!, while women (naturally) do cooking and housework.[7] Thus, pornographic magazines have advice on
how to enlarge penises and how to delay ejaculation; cookery books have advice
on how to make the ‘perfect meal’; women’s magazines show women how to ‘keep their men’, how to look ‘sexy’ and
how to ‘perform’ in bed and in kitchen. This is the social construction of what
she/he/‘we’ ‘want’. As men ‘want’ the ‘manly’ meat dish on their
plates - a meal, after all, is ‘no good’ without it, many also seemingly
‘want’, expect and demand some culturally constructed
‘meat’ in their bedrooms as well.
Barker is another writer
who notes that a great deal of pornography shows women enjoying being abused
(ibid.: 140). This factor seems to
warrant some comparison with John Robbin’s (1987: 131) claims (as seen in greater detail in Part Two) that modern culture
provides a ‘cotton candy’ version of the lives of animals who are depicted as
being delighted ‘offering themselves to children as friendly things to eat’.[8] No doubt some individual women do obtain some
sort of masochistic satisfaction by placing themselves in the position of the
abused, yet pornography appears to suggest that this is a common attitude for
women to hold or - as in the rape scene in the controversial
1970s film Straw Dogs - something
they will eventually appear to accept.
However, it is a fair bet that no nonhuman
animal
has actually delightedly offered herself up
to
the slaughterer’s knife or the experimenter’s scalpel. Therefore, such depiction, in either case,
are perhaps best regarded as essentially ideological in nature.
Do these constructions of
women in pornography have an empirical effect?
Again, as stated in relation to the ‘link’ between animal harm and
subsequent human harm, strict causality is not claimed
here - especially any that could be identified by positivistic
methodology. However, it is far easier
to be content with a position like Ted Benton’s (1998) who suggests that
cultural influences can shape the human individual. If a societal ‘ambience’ exists, different
people will react to it in different ways, but the general point that societies
can effectively ‘set the tone’ for the adoption of beliefs and attitudes
appears to be a defensible position.
Some feminist-inspired
research does suggest that male attitudes to real women are often influenced by pornographic characterisations, produced and distributed
within patriarchal culture. However, is there also any evidence to support the ecofeminist perspective that men
may see both women and animals/nature as objects for
exploitation? The same research does
seem to offer evidence in support of that assertion
as well.
For example, Russell cites
Shere Hite’s research in the 1980’s which was based on asking male respondents
to account for their declared wish to rape women. One interviewee said this:
Why do I want to rape women? Because I am basically, as a male, a predator and all women look to men like prey. I fantasise about the expression on a woman’s face when I ‘capture’ her and she realises she cannot escape. It’s like I won, I own her (quoted in Russell 1993: 120).
Here ‘man-the-hunter’ is revealed, the
‘predator’ after his ‘prey’ - or perhaps ‘man-the-pet-owner’, who ‘wins’ his women like one may win goldfishes at travelling
fairgrounds. Russell was also soon to find further evidence of ‘man-the-dissector’, as it appears that some rapists may not
see their victims as whole human beings, rather they see them simply as a
collection of body parts. Russell says
that to many men, women ‘are tits, cunts, and asses. This makes it easier to rape them. ‘It was difficult for me to admit that I was
dealing with a human being when I was talking to a women,’ one rapist reported’
(ibid.: 135). And, look out, here comes a-hunting the butcher man once more (reported to Zillmann
and Bryant in 1984): ‘A man should find them, fool them, fuck them, and forget
them’; with, ‘If they are old enough to bleed, they are old enough to butcher’
(cited in ibid.: 139).
MacKinnon (1992: 503) also
notes that in Merced, California, a man named Victor Burnham was convicted of
spousal rape for forcing his wife to have sex with 68 neighbours and/or
strangers while he took photographs, no doubt for later pornographic use. His wife says she was also forced by him to
have sex with a dog. Finally, and quite
shockingly in terms of the logic of domination thesis, she further testified to
‘episodes of torture with a battery-charged cattle prod’.
In the Sexist
Playground.
Feminist writers have understandably been interested in children’s’ sex
role socialisation and the effects of pornographic representations. Research with school students suggests that,
on a personal and peer group interactive level, naming young women as certain
types of animal can serve to restrict, alter and constrain their social
behaviour. For example, in the early
1980’s, Sue Lees and Sue Sharpe interviewed around 100 15- and 16-year old females
about a variety of their views and interests.
It soon emerged that one of their foremost concerns involved the social
construction of their sexual reputation and the steps they took to avoid being
called hurtful names (Lees & Sharpe 1984).
It became evident that
many of the respondents believed that they were being forced to tread a fine
line between acting in ways that may result in their teenage boyfriends, male
acquaintances and female friends calling them names such as ‘tight bitch’
(because they resisted sexual advances) on the one hand, and ‘slag’ or ‘easy
lay’ (because they too readily gave in to sexual advances) on the other.[9] Lees and Sharpe also found a range of
animalistic labels such as ‘old dog’, ‘cow’, and ‘blind dog’ used in a derogatory
manner.
Recalling a point made
above in the section on dehumanisation, one interviewee said she would rather
be called a cow or a dog than a ‘slag’ on the basis that others can clearly see that she is not an actual
four-legged bovine or canine creature.
Both the authors of this piece and this particular respondent think that
the animalistic slurs mentioned lie somewhere between the terms ‘tight bitch’
and ‘slag’. Lees and Sharpe say of the
women, ‘they mustn’t end up being called a slag’ (ibid.: 18). ‘Slag’ appears to rank with names such as
‘slut’, ‘tart’ and ‘scrubber’. In this
sense, still engaged in the business of dehumanisation, there seems to be some
labels even worse than being named as
a type of nonhuman animal. In fact, this
latter point appears to be true in some pornography as well. For example there is a particularly
disgusting anti-Semitic book entitled Sluts
of the S.S. (cited in Mayall & Russell 1993: 175) in which Jewish women
are described with ‘standard’ derogatory insults such as ‘whore’, ‘slut’, ‘dog’
and ‘swine’.[10] In one violent encounter a woman is called a
‘filthy Jewish slut’. However, as a
final insult - the move to absolute ‘thing-like’ categories with no possibility
of moral status - she is called a ‘human toilet’ in scenes of oral rape.
[1] On the one hand, ‘mainstream’ feminists (and
I immediately acknowledge the problematics of using such terms) suggest that
ecofeminism ‘essentialises’ women as ‘close to nature’ beings, while Carol
Adams (1994: 87-88), who has labelled herself a ‘feminist-vegetarian critical
theorist’, criticises ecofeminism for not recognising that animal domination is
absolutely central to nature domination.
This appears similar to Jim Mason’s (1993) ‘agri-cultural’ perspective.
[2] The notion of the ‘logic of domination’ has
proved to be controversial in ecological philosophy, with writers criticising
and defending its conceptual validity.
See, for example, Dixon
[3] see
http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/win98/fe_win98womentrade.html for an
account from Earth Island Journal of
the global trade in women and children.
Like nonhuman animals, this article notes, ‘Throughout history,
patriarchy has valued women not as persons but as things, pieces of property to
be bought and sold’.
[4] Some feminist writers do not seem to share
this perspective. For example, White
(1993: 106) in a chapter entitled, ‘Pornography and Pride’, apparently does not
see women characterised as animals as harmful due to men seeing both as
exploitable but because she is
offended that men make the comparison and ‘lower’ women to animal status. She writes: ‘[In the history of slavery,
Black women were] at the bottom of the pile, treated like animals instead of
human beings. As I listened to these
victims of pornography, I heard young people describe how they felt about
seeing other women in pornography, how they felt about the way women’s genitals
and breasts were displayed and women’s bodies are shown in compromising
positions. I thought about the time of
slavery, when Black women had their bodies invaded, their teeth and limbs
examined, their bodies checked out for breeding, checked out as you would an
animal, and I said to myself, We’ve come
a long way, haven’t we?’ (bold type added).
[5] Porn titles comprising racism or speciesism,
or racism and speciesism: ‘Animal Sex
Among Black Women,’ ‘Black Bitch,’ ‘Black Girl’s Animal Love,’ ‘Bitch’s Black
Stud,’ ‘Gang Banged by Blacks, ‘ ‘Geisha Girls,’ ‘Oriental Sadist’s Pet.’
‘Raped by Arab Terrorists,’ ‘Bound Harem Girl.’
[6] Collins, P. H. (1993:
101), in ‘Pornography and Black Women’s Bodies’, note that, ‘Certain ‘races’ of
people have been defined as being more body-like, more animal-like, and less
godlike than others’. Biological notions
of race and gender prevalent in the early nineteenth century which fostered the
animalistic icon of Black female sexuality were joined by the appearance of a
racist biology incorporating the concept of degeneracy (Foucault, 1980). While the sexual and racial dimensions of
being treated like an animal are important, the economic foundation underlying
this treatment is critical. Animals can
be economically exploited, worked, sold, killed, and consumed. As “mules”, African-American women become
susceptible to such treatment. [these
views reinforced by pornographic images of Black women]. Publicly exhibiting Black women may have been
central to objectifying Black women as animals and to creating the icon of
Black women as animals (Collins 1993: 101-02)
[7] A recent advertisement for lager was
constructed in this fashion: the potential (and in pornography inevitable)
sexual couplet involved a ‘housewive’ and an electrician who ostensibly arrives
to ‘service’ her refrigerator.
[8] We may recall reactions to the scene in
Douglas Adams’ Restaurant At the End of
the Galaxy when a pig enthusiastically offers himself up as food, even
suggesting the body parts he felt to be the most tender.
[9] Lees and Sharpe (1984: 19) recognise that
there are derogatory names for young men too, such as ‘wanker’ and ‘prick’ -
interestingly, no animal names are used to depict men, at least in this study,
while the authors claim that there is a far bigger choice of hurtful names to
aim at females rather than males.
[10] The Anti Nazi League (2000: 11) cites
Holocaust denier David Irvin who says of Hungarian Jews being shipped
to Auschwitz in 1944: ‘You are talking about
45,000 tonnes of meat’.
[1] The British animal rights organisation VIVA!
produced a video in 2000 entitled ‘Sentenced To Death’ which revealed similar
stunning failures in British slaughterhouses (Arcnews 2000: 18).
[2] Bourke (1999: 356) cites Richard A. Kulka et
al., Trauma and the Vietnam War
Generation. Report of Findings from the
National Vietnam New
York Australia Vietnam Sydney
[1] According to Bourke (1999: 153-54), the
British Army experimented in ‘hate-training’ in 1941 and 1942. Apart from having to run while a loudspeaker
chanted ‘Kill the Hun. Kill the Hun’, part
of the ‘training’
involved recruits being sprayed with sheep’s blood and being taken to animal
slaughterhouses.
[1] If one were to take naming nonhuman animals
as indicative of ‘personally knowing’ them, there are some parallels here. For example, when Richard Guy and Gilly
Metherell began the ‘Real Meat Company’, they commonsensically recognised that
naming animals they intended to eat may create difficulties. However, rather than not naming them at all,
Guy says he deliberately called ‘his’ first pig Boorman ‘so we wouldn’t mind
eating it’ (my emphasis, quoted in
the Independent, 3 Nov., 1999 ).
[2] Calley talked about how the military defined
and understood ‘enemy’ (in Tester 1997: 87): ‘They didn’t give it a race, they
didn’t give it a sex, they didn’t give it an age’. In common with much talk about animals other
than ‘pets’, ‘thing-like’ status is emphasised with the word ‘it’ (see footnote
7).
[3] The assumption of the potency in
dehumanising training appears to have registered at least with one North
American jury. In 1977, a US
[4] Bourke (1999:456-57) cites the following
references here: John T. MacCurdy, War
Neuroses (Cambridge 1918), p. 35; William A. Bacher (ed.), The Treasure Star Parade (New York
1942), p. 359; James J. Fahey, Pacific
War Diary 1942-1945 (Boston 1963), p. 178; John J. Floherty, The Courage and the Glory (Philadelphia
1942), p. 94; Henry (‘Jo’) Gullett, Not
as a Duty Only. An Infantryman’s War (Melbourne Natal Battle London
[1] Clark
(1984: 15) first cites D.G. Richie’s Natural
Rights (1916) as an exemplar of this view.
Regan (2001: 66-84) states that modern philosopher, Carl Cohen, provides
animal rights theorists with important criticisms, incorporating this view,
that deserve to be taken seriously rather than summarily dismissed. Scruton (2000) insists that rights must be
attached to duties, meaning that animal rights is a non-starter.
[2] According to Patterson (2002: 95-6), North
American eugenicists ‘were the strongest foreign supporters of Nazi race
policies’. Some were particularly
impressed by the power of film and Patterson notes that many Nazi propaganda
films were about “hereditarily ill’ people’, who were described on screen as
‘creatures’, ‘beings’ ‘existences’, ‘life unworthy of life’ and ‘travesties of
human form and spirit’.
[3] The concept of ‘animal pity’ will be
explored in Part Two of this thesis.
[1] In a lecture in 1985, cited in Serpell
(1986: 152), Miriam Rothchild rather put the point the other way around, saying
that, ‘just as we have to depersonalise human opponents in wartime in order to
kill them with indifference, so we have to create a void between ourselves and
the animals on which we inflict pain and misery for profit’.
[1] Baker writes
(http://www.psyeta.org/sa4.1/baker.html) that theorists such as Foucault and
Derrida ‘would want to insist on the scope for using their work as a basis for constructing ethically responsible
positions, and not just - more fashionably - for ‘deconstructing’ them’.
[1] As said, of all the ‘pro-use industries’,
the animal experimentation business is the least able to make the ‘vast gulf’
claim because of the constant need to stress the existence of sufficient
similarities between nonhuman animals and humans if the results of animal
vivisection are to be characterised as beneficial to humans (see Ruesch 1979:
331-32).
[2] It is difficult to find definitions relating
to words about animals that do not contain pejorative meanings. For example, according to the 1999 (tenth
edition) Concise Oxford
[3] ‘I am a baby Aryan, not Jewish or
sectarian. I have no plans to marry an
ape or Rastafarian’. A ‘ditty’ holocaust
denier David Irving taught to his daughter (Anti Nazi League 2000: 11).
[4] It perhaps should be noted that these
authors themselves do not refer to the species barrier as such. Thus, in talk about processes of
depersonalisation and dehumanisation, they will not characterise what occurs as
human beings being cast towards the ‘other’ or ‘wrong’ side of the species
barrier. Since this appears to be the
reality of such processes, it may be thought significant that the process is
not expressed in this way. Could it be
that ‘we’ so firmly ‘know’ that animals other than humans are exploitable that
it hardly needs to be said? Equally,
could it be that we just ‘know’ the devastating consequences of being thought
of as nonhuman?
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