Farming Animals & Feminism

Feminism is a range of movements and ideologies with the goal to achieve women’s rights.  A feminist advocates for rights and equality.

A strange phenomenon is that women can become so ensconced  in the current culture that they are unable to see how they themselves contribute to the environment that pushes against women’s rights.

I have a 23 year old son who is extremely perceptive. We drove by a road construction site the other day and he pointed out the Men At Work sign.  He told me this was sexist because he has seen women doing road construction as well.  I had never thought about that.  Here I am a female and it never even crossed my mind.

I went home and Googled Women At Work signs.  I couldn’t find any.  There are gender neutral signs.  The only Women At Work signs I could find were mockery.

I have a question.

Why are there Men At Work signs where both men and women work, gender neutral signs where both men and women work, but no Women At Work signs where both men and women work?  My guess is that most people would have stopped at ‘why don’t they just use gender neutral signs?’ but would not have thought to ask for Women At Work signs regardless of a mixed gender environment.

“So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay.  And when I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked.  But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that, “

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

Rare for a man or a woman to think that any organization not specifically for females should be represented only by females.  Why?  

Why have I never wondered about the Men At Work signs?

For the past five years I have finally begun to question everything.  I realize that I may be part of the problems I wish to eliminate.  I set out to discover who I really am even if that meant not liking what I found out about myself.

What do I do as a female that simply follows the ideologies of our culture with respect to females?  How do I contribute to the damaging effects, even without my knowledge; subconsciously?  And how can I bring into my field of vision the things I am blind to?  If a bold lettered sign does not even register with me, what else does not register with me that should?

I watched a simple video of a mother cow who had just given birth.  I did not know that in order for me to have milk on the grocery store shelf, a female cow must either be pregnant or must have just given birth.  The baby cannot have the milk because then there would not be enough left for humans to consume. I watched the desperation as the baby was placed into a wheel-barrel and hauled off.  I heard the noises of their cries.  I saw the look in the eyes of the baby.  I learned that the mother’s mourning may go on for days.  After watching that simple video I Googled some of the other industry standards of which I was unaware.

Females are what keep the animals as food industry going. Their bodies are the necessary vessels kept in a constant cycle of rape, pregnancy, and slaughter once they can no longer produce milk for example. This means that many of these females are pregnant when sent to slaughter and it does not matter how far along in pregnancy they are when sent.  It is common for a baby to born of the gutting process still alive.  Please click here to read about FBS or Fetal Bovine Serum and Slink Leather to find out some of the things these babies are put through in their short and unloved lives.  The babies are sometimes born alive because an animal must be kept alive during slaughter. The hammer to the head is not to be humane.  It is because the heart must continue to pump to let the blood out.  If the animal were conscious it would thrash and fight for its life and the slaughterhouse worker would not be able to efficiently drag the knife across the throat and then down the underbelly where the organs and the live baby will spill out; the trash of the industry.

The rape rack

What is so astounding about the animals as food industry is that females are the linchpin of its continuous and eternal cycle. I am not talking about the female animals here.  I am talking about you and me, the human females.

The industry is so confident that you and I will dismiss anything the animal agriculture industry does to females that they do not even hide the fact that they are raping the animals.  The term rape rack is the common term for the apparatus that holds the female body in place as she is inseminated.  You may look up what a cow must go through to be inseminated.  Or what other animals placed upon the rack go through.

We don’t mind it.  We don’t mind that these female animals must endure being forever pregnant just as soon as they are able.  We don’t mind that as soon as their babies are born they are taken away either as garbage, killed on the spot, abandoned, or sent to a veal box or to to serve a similar fate as their mother.  We don’t care that these mothers do care.  That animal babies are born with their brains fully developed – an anatomical impossibility for a human who stands upright with a narrow birth canal – and therefore these babies are aware.  We either don’t care because we either don’t know or, once we do know, we continue not to care.  We hold steadfast to tradition because that’s how we were raised and we are given every reason to justify it just as any discriminatory practice has its group that will not, can not be moved.

Click here to read the story of a mother cow and what she did for her child. They are aware. They care.

We have been so indoctrinated not to even think about females and motherhood in any other way other than what our culture has presented to us that we have no problem putting the breast milk of another mother into our mouths and away from the child for whom it was intended; away from a mother who did not consent to either the pregnancy or the taking of her breast milk.

We eat breasts.

We also eat the ovum of other females.

We eat their bodies.  We eat their children.

We eat with no thought or care.  Which is exactly how the industry wants us.

Worse, we teach it to our children.

And worst:  we defend these practices. We are the advocates for this industry that essentially enslaves females into motherhood and then tosses all of them to the kill floor.

We will say anything necessary to continue to eat the bodies, the babies, the breasts, the breast milk, and the ovum of these females.  We will even ostracize any female we meet that does not partake of these things.  We call them derogatory names and believe the stereotypes of those who do not eat the parts and pieces of other females.

Why do animals matter?  Because the ability to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, to participate in inequality and discrimination (we would never treat our dogs or cats the way we treat food animals on the nicest of ‘farms’) is where misogyny comes from.  The ability to say because you are (female) (cow) (pig) (fish), a thing of which you cannot help, you do not deserve equal consideration.

People do get confused about rights.  Equal rights means if you are human you should have the same rights as another human.  If you are non-human animal you should have the same rights as other animals.  Rights are what we are all born with.  The right to live and die naturally, to consent to the use of our bodies, and to be free.  Rights are not given – they are taken away but the right is still there.  A dog does not have the right to drive a car anymore than a man has the right to breathe under water with gills.  But should a dog have the right to be a dog and not a food?  A fish to be a fish and not a food?  A man a man and not a slave?

Simply because we were women, a thing of which we can not help, we were denied rights.

Simply because a cow is born a cow or a chicken is born a chicken, a thing of which they cannot help, we deny them their rights.  We deny rights based on what body you are born into.

If we would not put a dog on a rape rack, force them to remain constantly pregnant, take their babies from them, and send them to slaughter when they could no longer give birth or produce milk then why do we do it to cows?  Why do we farm any female animal?

Breasts and breast milk: what are these things for and for who?

Ovum: what is this for and who does it belong to?

Bodies:  what should and should not be done to a female body without her consent?

Babies:  what is a baby for and who does the baby belong to?

If our answers are different depending on what ‘body’ the living being was born into, but the answers could be the same, then are we gratifying an industry that lives and breathes on the exploitation of the female body?

I know it’s hard to see it.  That is why brainwashing and propaganda work so well – because we don’t know that we are brainwashed when we are.

Females are the most vulnerable and yet the most powerful.  They are the ghosts in the animal agriculture machine.  So innocent.  So vulnerable.  So eternally abused with no regard.

If every female took a stand against the use of any female body anywhere then the world would change.

We get to choose with whom we will bring children into the world, if at all.  We get to teach those children.  We get to say no.  We get to teach our sons that to be a man is not to harm other mothers but to be a man is to protect all mothers.  There is no more strength than this:  A man who has weaned himself from the breast milk of an innocent female who has never harmed him and who does not think it his right to chew on her breasts, her ovum, her body, or her children’s bodies.

“Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don’t.” Oskar Schindler

To protect is strength.

When strength is defined as violence and we accept this then we are part of the problem.  When we partake in this violence, teach it to our children, and even defend it we are not just a part of the problem.  We are the problem.

The problem is discrimination.  And until we no longer participate in it on any level we will never succeed in solving any particular brand of discrimination.

~Peace and PS my son is 23 years old, 6’2″ tall, 185 pounds, healthy, happy, and vegan.  No wonder he saw ‘the sign(s)’.