radcatfem โฟ twenty eight, european, vegan. this is a side blog, i do not 100% agree with every post that i reblog. all my posts are tagged, if you wish to navigate this, please click here
can i ask a genuine question? no hate i promise because you seem like you care a lot about womenโs issues and so do i, iโm just trying to understand another viewpoint
do you dislike the trans community in general or only trans people who are perpetuating problematic viewpoints? i understand a lot of what youโre saying (men shouldnโt be the focus of feminism etc, thatโs true) but i do personally believe that a trans person living their life how they want doesnโt affect me
again no hate to you at all, just wondering!
Before I didnโt but shit has gone so far I honestly see any claims of opposite sex identity as problematic. Interpersonally, socially and legally itโs a problem. Iโll personally never be fine with a male person seriously identifying as female/woman and vice versa.
A man can look and act as girly as he wants and joke about being one of the โgowrlsโ but the minute he starts earnestly crafting a gender/sex fiction or acting disconnected from the reality that heโs male- itโs a no for me.
We already tried the live and let live approach with dysphoric people. It started off as them saying they just need to pretend for their mental heath. And everyone, even a big bad terf like me, was on board ready to affirm to โbe kindโ. And then it turned into whatever the fuck is going on now.
Things are so bad for women, any grace or compassion we extend is rapidly turned into abuse. Itโs like when a lady tries to help homeless men in her community and ends becoming a victim of rape or SA. Unfortunately when women extend ourselves in good faith, males have a way taking the opportunity to do what they do. Itโs good to be kind but not the expense of your own safety, dignity, rights and self esteem.
Women giving is not the problem itโs that people, especially those born male, do not know when to stop.
Trans activists think they're super fucking smart when they point out that some women don't have cervices, uteri, vaginas, breasts, etc. They like to say that radfems think these women aren't women because of it. Yes, we are all aware that some women are missing body parts or have body parts that don't function due to injury, illness, or developmental disorders. But in the same way that some humans missing a leg doesn't mean all humans are not bipedal, some women missing components of their reproductive system does not make them not female.
Trans activists, by insisting that women having missing or dysfunctional reproductive organs make them the same as men who identify as women, YOU are denying them their womanhood. Being female cannot be taken away as much as it cannot be opted into. Stop using disabled women, women with DSDs, and women who have had parts of their body removed as your pawns.
When Marxists critique the capitalist system, they say (truthfully) that all workers are exploited by it and coerced into working by the ruling class, despite them enjoying their jobs or not, and that it is a natural prerequisite of the capitalist system due to its structure. This is rarely seen (and only seen by the capitalist) as infantilizing the worker or taking away the agency of the proletariat, simply making an observation of their circumstance.
However when feminists, similarly critiquing the patriarchal system, say that all women are exploited by it and coerced to do certain things by their equivalent ruling/oppressive class, despite them enjoying these things or not, and that this coercion is a natural prerequisite of the patriarchal system due to its structure, this is seen by other apparent feminists as infantilizing women and taking away all women's agency, not simply making an observation of their circumstance.
What is the material difference here? That you want it to be untrue or offensive in some way, so it serves to make you feel better about the world and your life within it?
Part of the chasm stems from the fact that modern feminism has been turned into an individual movement, focused on individual whims rather than collective necessity. Another part of it comes from the fact that unlike Marxism, where the oppressor is the oligarch, the bourgeoisie, and the ruling class, all figures whom the majority of the proletariat scarcely make direct contact with, for feminism the oppressor is in women's beds, classrooms, at the head of their dinner tables and shoulder-to-shoulder with them at work.
These factors make it difficult for women to truly interrogate their lives through the lens of feminist theory since application of these thoughts (like any thorough political movement) requires dedication and discipline which are not easy to come by or maintain when you are:
A. Oppressed by the patriarchal (and other) system(s)
And
B. Told that feminism and other movements like it are inherently focused on your wants, not the needs of a collective. This makes it easy to default to thinking everything not specifically focused on your whims is incorrect or offensive.
in every political movement no matter how radical or left leaning the women will always be relegated to collateral by the male members. no matter which marginalized identity they belong to or what civil rights they're advocating for, the female members will be the lowest priority if they're even acknowledged at all. misogyny will always be the thing that unites even the noblest and most committed of male activists, even the most destitute and disenfranchised men. they will never fight on behalf of women unless they benefit from it too.
To people who defend porn by bringing up home-made consensual masturbation videos/amateur couple videos and that sort of thing: there are videos like that of me (and me with another woman) circulating on the internet that were stollen from me and are now being sold without my consent. Many many camgirls have their private video sessions illegally recorded and sold. Not to mention all theย โcoupleโ videos where the girls were told it was just for personal use, and then their boyfriends post them online. Just bc it was consensually filmed doesnโt mean it was consensually shared.ย
Not to mention you will never know if it was even consensually filmed in the first place since many men record women without their consent both in the bedroom and online. And if they did consent, you have no idea what kind of factors very likely influenced and coerced theย โconsentโ for it to be filmed, such as pressure from their boyfriends/husbands or women who were forced to in abusive relationships or women who did it out of economic desperation. This goes for cam girls, amateur porn, and women who are not in the sex industry who have made homemade videos.ย
Plus you have to take into consideration how porn culture, objectification, misogyny, and capitalism all play a huge role in all of this and how women and girls are groomed into thinking these things are expected of them in relationships. The prevalence of porn absolutely plays a huge part in coercing women to feel like they have to make videos with their male partners. I was personally pressured into making videos with an emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend who made me feel like if I did not make videos with him he would cheat or be โforcedโ to look at porn even though he knew I didnโt want him consuming porn (of course, even though I made these videos with him, he still constantly looked at porn anyway and it was a large part of what ruined our relationship).
These videos were sold online as a cam girl and the sex depicted in them was uncomfortable, fake, painful, and humiliating (mainly because of the fact that there was constantly a fucking camera in the bedroom with us) and the only reason I ever sold them was because they were the only means of making ends meet at the time, which certainly does not fall under the parameters of enthusiastic/genuine consent. Having to do that seriously fucked me up and the fact that those videos are still out there (both in possession of my ex and online) really destroys me. This isnโt even touching on all of the recordings of me as a cam girl that are out there that were captured and distributed without my supposed โconsent.โ When you look at it from these perspectives there is really no way to justify it at all.
if the person in the video had to choose between doing the video and having necessities (a form of coercion)
if the person in the video was in an abusive situation (also coercion)
if the person in the video was previously in an abusive situation and still operating in that mindset (also coercion)
if the person in the video was under the influence of any substances (also coercion)
And if we know that at least some of these videos are actually exploitive/rape, how can anyone watch them, knowing they may at any time be participating in this exploitation. To use a previous metaphor: what percentage of horror/action movies would need to include real murder before you refuse to watch them?
It really is not discussed enough how radical queer/kink culture inevitably begins to endorse white supremacist ideals and rape apologia. You cannot neatly or surgically sever the notion that many fetish practices get their roots from the subjugation of vulnerable people.
I find it deeply disturbing the amount of people that excuse "race play" under the guise of fetishism and kink. Misogynistic, zoophilic and pedophilic language and dogma permeates every facet of these communities that beat their chest to how progressive and radical they are.
In reality they truly are nothing more than a convinient distillation of far right ideology with a slap of rainbow paint over it. These spaces overwhelmingly enable white males (gender nonconforming or not) to get a pass and fanfare for their violent abuse.
This isn't to say I am remotely sex negative. Sex should be enjoyable and pleasurableโ I simply implore you to analyze why you find it necessary to gratify yourself to tangibly detrimental things.
There is nothing radical or subversive about the fetishism of subjugation. You are conforming exactly to how the system wants you to.
along the lines of kink inherently and inevitably embodying themes of subjugation of the vulnerable, there's this interview on lesbians' opinions on Sadomasochism from 'Thank God I'm a Lesbian (1993)' (the video is age-restricted so you'll have to sign in/verify to watch it), and the Black woman's thoughts at 1:57 have always really stuck with me:
"I think one of the thing's that's interesting to me as a Black woman, looking at the iconography of the 'S&M movement', if you will... is that I am totally turned off by chains. Totally turned off by, you know, collars. Totally turned off by imprisonment. Totally turned off by all of the motifs that seem to go into that as a lifestyle.
I'm totally turned off by any notion, even the most vague, even the imagery of brutality. It really has no place in my project of freedom at all. And I don't want to be liberal and say, 'well, I don't know quite what people are doing,' and all that kind of stuff -- I know an image, an historical image when I see one, and I'm absolutely turned off by them because of my experience in the world, and the experience of my people, in terms of slavery, and bondage, and imprisonment."
Thereโs a book called critiquing Lesbian sadomasochism in the gay nineties which is similar. One of the pieces of writing that stood out to me was a Jewish woman writing about how the imagery was deeply disturbing for her, as her family were holocaust survivors or died in camps. She essentially said that the imagery of S&M was so similar to stories about what happened in camps, and at the time people were dressing up in SS Uniform as part of the whole damn thing.
There was also a lot of S&M films made in the seventies set around and in concentration camps.
As far as Iโve seen there is no major pushback against these things in the modern day either.
"My silence on lesbian sadomasochism ended when I saw two antisemitic sadomasochists at a women's festival. A woman wearing a kippah was being walked like a dog on a chain by a woman dressed in Nazi "leather". When I protested, the woman in leather listened politely and agreed to remove her Nazi insignia and her captive's kippah. I got the impression that she had never considered the political implications, i.e. antisemitism, of the "scene" she was performing. Identifying witb a Nazi (his uniform) in any context means identifying not only with a sexually domineering sadist, but also with someone who hates Jews, who wants Jews to suffer and be annihilated. Pretending to be Jewish (wearing a kippah) chained with a leash, is not just identifying with a sexually submissive masochist. It is also embracing the humiliation and torture of Jews under Nazi antisemitism; it is the Jewish man or woman who is being hurt, and look how much he or she enjoys it."
"The sadist's domineering and coercive mockery is sometimes imposed on our communities. In 1988, I posted a notice for a workshop entitled 'The effects of sadistic/violent sexual practices on non-participants : a support group; closed to sadomasochistic participants and their advocates.' As a small group of us sat on the floor talking, six or seven women carrying whips came and stood behind us with their arms crossed. They said nothing; the intention to intimidate was clear. Another example of the pervasive effect of sadomasochism on a community occurred in 1990, when the organizers of a large women's festival wrote about the sadomasochistic activity of some women infringes on the rights of other women 'to move freely and safety, without fear or horror'. "
Melissa Farley, Ten lies about Sadomasochism in Sinister Wisdom #50 Summer/Fall 1993, pages 29 to 37. A translation in French can be found here where the translator added sources and examples of what the author is talking about (warning : graphic !)
All men need is an excuse to express their rape fantasies towards women. A moral excuse is the best excuse of course. That way they can be the enlightened hero who fucks and puts the wicked whore in her place, and with that, defeating the evil force she represents altogether.
Here, men are joking and talking about wanting to punish a female FIDESZ politician by raping her anally. Being true warriors of justice.
These lyrics are from a song by a popular FIDESZ critical male artist. It says he's going to fuck a female far right politician's throat.
The song and especially this part became very popular within liberal, leftist, and anti-fidesz circles. I've seen him described as a 'lyrical genius'. Real original and eloquent lyrics. Men's wish to violate (problematic) women is seen as proof of their moral righteousness, as deserving of praise.
This is one of the most famous social critic, political commentator, public figure of Hungary, a real intellectual guy alright, celebrating the TISZA victory against FIDESZ by a post that perfectly demonstrates how sex is viewed by men as a weapon of conquest and domination against women, something you do to a woman to debase her, to take her dignity away completely: TISZA (man) fucks FIDESZ (woman).
Note how it's anal, and note the #porn. Porn has elevated male violence to a new level of socially acceptable. Anal was popularized by porn because it's painful.
Two people I know liked the post, I scratched them out. One is an adult liberal woman. The other is a leftist boy my age, who would surely describe himself as system-critical.
I'm not at all suprised by these male sentiments and the wide support they receive. But it is a sad reminder: it doesn't matter that it's supposed to be a time of unity between Hungarians, a celebration of how the people defeated a corrupt, immoral regime. Men never were and never will be allies of women.
They don't see these posts as being hateful or divisive against half of the people who helped make the change happen (this is important because spreading hatred and dividing the nation is a big criticism towards FIDESZ). How could that even be possible, if to them women were never really part of the group, the allience, the nation, humanity in the first place?
And anyway, they're saying this towards women we don't like, evil women, bad women. Wishing violence on women who are on the 'bad guys' side is always morally justifiable.
What is important for all women to understand, is that you are just as likely to be a subject of this hate, even if you're on the 'good guys' side. Make no mistake, they're expressing their general bloodthirst towards women. Men are foaming at the mouth for any excuse to voice their wish to hurt and dominate women.
Being a woman is excuse enough. Being a bad woman is an even better excuse, and in their eyes, you too can easily become the bad woman for whatever reason. Unfortunately, no one defends women, especially not if they're already seen as deserving of punishment.
We need female solidarity. All women deserve human dignity, yes, even those you hate or dislike, even those who are genuinely evil. Because this rethoric dehumanizes us all, it perpetuates sexual violence against each and every woman and girl, only further strengthening male power.
Men made AI pictures of Alexandra Szentkirรกlyi (FIDESZ-politician) being a prostitute. They did this with other female Orbรกn supporters as well, saying they should create an Onlyfans or become a prostitute now (since FIDESZ politicians and their supporters won't get money from the state anymore aka they lose their current jobs).
Szentkirรกlyi got spat on and was called a whore on the street. Men saying they would have made her suck their dick or fucked her instead:
Other comments saying she deserved it (most popular type of comment), 'a whore shouldn't be suprised if she's fucked':
Other things:
Funny he says he wouldn't jerk off to her, as they are all fantasizing about raping her or making her a whore.
By the way my male teacher too, during class, in front of teenagers, derisively said Szentkirรกlyi should create an Onlyfans account. But of course, he wouldn't watch that ugly whore. Yeah right, that why you're on your 4th angry rant about Onlyfans today. These men would fuck and jerk off to just about anything, but again, it's best if they feel they're punishing an evil whore.
Aaand these are just a few of a lot. There are a bunch of women actively and gleefully engaging in this behaviour, naive to the fact that they too are a woman, and are 1 step away from becoming an evil bitch for stepping out of line in whatever context, and getting the same treatment. Wake upp!! This affects all women.
You'll never see a middle aged man trying to be genuine friends with a 19 year old boy. Why? Because obviously he's not mature enough to be on the same level as him or share the same worldview.
But suddenly, when it's a 19 year old girl, she's so mature for her age, she just gets him, she knows what she's doing.
It's so obvious that it's not about 'maturity'. It's about control and power dynamics. They don't see these girls as mature, they see them as easily manipulated young girls who they can control and who will put up with their bullshit. If they could go lower they would.
"gender neutral" and it's just masculine. People proving once again they see anything associated to men as the standard and anything associated to women as a secondary deviation of the standard, but this time making it "progressive"
Killing Animals That Donโt Fit In: Moral Dimensions of Habitat Restoration.
By Jo-Ann Shelton, University of California Santa Barbara
The purpose of this paper is to discuss justifications for the violent destruction of feral animals during habitat restoration projects. Habitat restoration is the process of changing a landscape, which has been altered by human activities, back to an approximation of its former appearance. This process of reversal requires a high degree of human intervention and management. These are, of course, the same human behaviors that produced the initial alterations, the ones which now seem regrettable. I will argue that proponents of the eradication of feral species continue to adhere to an age-old paradigm that assigns value to animals in accordance with human interests. And when they are unwilling to take into consideration the animal distress that their projects cause, they exhibit the same desire to manipulate Nature that has motivated humans from the beginning of our existence as a species.
One goal of restoration is to insure the survival of flora and fauna which existed in a region before the arrival of humans (especially Europeans) and their biological baggage. Killing species which were introduced by humans and which now threaten the survival of species which have inhabited an area for a much longer period seems like a simple, quick and relatively inexpensive remedy. And therefore killing is widely condoned by restorationists, even when the methods -- for example, poisoning, snare trapping, or shooting -- cause considerable pain to the animals. But the infliction of pain by humans raises ethical issues because human, unlike other species, are well aware of the impact of our actions; it is, moreover, an aspect of human nature to have sympathetic impulses and to believe that causing harm is a matter of moral concern. Although animals do, of course, cause one another pain and distress, we humans are not therefore absolved of moral responsibility for the pain and distress that we cause.
When restorationists defend their methods of killing, they assert that they are fulfilling another moral responsibility -- a moral responsibility to preserve biological diversity and to undo ecological damage done by people who had a very different opinion about the natural world. There are several problems with this defense, perhaps the most obvious being that it depends on an internally contradictory definition of Nature, a definition that presumes that Nature is, on the one hand, something separate, autonomous and undisturbed by humans, but also that Nature is, on the other hand, something able to be (re)constructed and managed by humans. Correlative to the first definition, that Nature is an entity free of human interference, is the belief that feral animals (or their domesticated ancestors) have been constructed by humans, are therefore unnatural, and do not belong in a natural landscape. However this disdain for "constructed" animals seems to conflict with the belief expressed in the second definition, that it is appropriate for humans to (re)construct Nature. Also problematic are the assumptions that recreating an archaic landscape is both a feasible goal and a laudable display of human ingenuity.
I want especially to challenge two suppositions: that the killing of feral animals to protect wild species demonstrates a fundamental shift in attitudes toward the natural world, and that we cannot promote the interests of some species without ignoring humane considerations about others. I will argue that the violent destruction of animals perpetuates a philosophy that humans have the right to destroy elements of nature whenever and why ever they choose. To illustrate my argument, I will discuss two examples of mass shootings of grazing animals. In each case, shooters justified the killing on the grounds that the targeted species "did not fit" in the region any more. The first example is the shooting of bison in 19th century America. The second example is the shooting of feral sheep in the final decades of the 20th century in the area of California where I live.
People of European descent killed bison for several reasons: to clear the land for agriculture and herding, to profit from the sale of hides, to reduce the population of native Americans by eliminating their food source, and to have fun. The procurement of food was only one, and frequently not the primary reason for hunting bison.In fact, very often the skinned carcasses were left where the animals had fallen. And sometimes they were not even skinned because they had been shot only for sport (Roe 1970, p, 429; Fleharty 1995, pp. 29 and 255; Danz 1997, pp. 92-114). The hunting of bison for sport became even more popular as railroad lines across the continent were constructed. Consider these accounts from the years 1867 and 1872. (Fleharty, pp. 73-75).
"Few lines of railway in the world offer such facilities for the sportsman and hunter as the Kansas Pacific. Where else in the world can a man recline in the luxuriously cushioned seats of a Pullman Palace car, gliding over the smoothest of tracks, and look out on the immense herds of that Monarch of the Plains -- the Buffalo -- some clumsily cantering along within one hundred yards of the train, and others still further off, watching it with a sort of lazy stupid wonder."
"Nearly every railroad train which leaves or arrives at Fort Hays on the Kansas Pacific Railroad has its race with these herds of buffalo; and a most interesting and exciting scene is the result. The train is โslowedโ to a rate of speed about equal to that of the herd: the passengers get out fire-arms which are provided for the defense of the train against the Indians, and open from the windows of the cars a fire that resembles a brisk skirmish. Frequently a young bull will turn at bay for a moment. His exhibition of courage is generally his death-warrant, for the whole fire of the train is turned upon him or some member of the herd in his immediate vicinity".
Hunters were not deterred by sympathetic impulses, as this 1879 account reveals (Collison 1963, p. 56). "I have killed, and seen killed, thousands of buffalo cows. They were skinned and their calves were left to starve to death or be eaten by the wolves and coyotesโฆ.These little calves were lying by the dead cows. We had to keep driving them away while skinning the cows. I saw some of them trying to suck the cows. After the mothers were skinned and the hides were in the wagon, the calves would follow. They could smell the hides and would follow them to the hide yard. They were gone the next morning -- back to where they had sucked the last time, either to starve to death or be killed by the wolves."
The relentless slaughter of millions of bison prompted no moral concern because their killers were eradicating a species that impeded human interests in exploiting the land. Buffalo occupied areas which could be grazed by domesticated animals or cultivated for crops. Consider this justification by Frank Mayer, one of the last professional buffalo hunters (Mayer and Roth 1958, p. 27). "The buffalo served his mission, fulfilled his destiny in the history of the Indian, by furnishing him everything he needed-- food, clothing, a home, traditions, even a theology. But the buffalo didn't fit in so well with the white man's encroaching civilization -- he didn't fit in at all, in fact. He could not be controlled or domesticated. He couldn't be corralled behind wire fences. He was a misfit. So he had to go."
In an era when wilderness was a region waiting to cultivated, grazed, mined, logged, or otherwise utilized for human economic benefit, bison had few defenders. Let me now turn to a contemporary situation: the shooting of sheep on Santa Cruz Island, which lies off the southern California coast, about 26 miles from Santa Barbara. The island's long isolation from the mainland allowed the evolution of several species and sub-species of plants and animals. The earliest human immigrants to the Island were Chumash Indians who settled there about 10,000 years ago. Europeans reached the Island in the 18th century and subsequently introduced domesticated plants and animals, particularly sheep, cattle, pigs and horses (as well as, inadvertently, alien wild species). Activities that have altered the landscape over the last two centuries include the grazing and rooting of the introduced animals, the clearing of native vegetation to make room for cultivated plants, the cutting of trees for timber, and the construction of roads and buildings. Even the suppression by humans of periodic wildfires, which play an important role in maintaining the health of southern California ecosystems, has contributed to modifying the landscape. In response to these various changes, populations of indigenous plants have been reduced. Conversely, introduced plants, particularly fennel and thistle, are thriving (Brumbaugh 1980; National Park Service 1985, pp. 6-10 and 40). By 1980, when ranching operations had become unprofitable for the several private owners of Santa Cruz Island, opportunities arose for the acquisition of the land by groups interested in restoration and conservation (Gherini 1994). In 1978, The Nature Conservancy purchased an interest in the western 90% of the Island, about 54,500 acres, over which it assumed full control in 1987. In 1997, the National Park Service acquired the eastern 10%, about 6200 acres, and incorporated it into the Channel Islands National Park which had been created in 1980.In 2000, The Nature Conservancy transferred 8500 of its acres to the Park Service (Burns 2000). In both areas, cattle had been removed by their owners to the mainland for slaughter, but large numbers of sheep and pigs, and a small number of horses had been abandoned to free-roam and thus become feral. Despite its name, The Nature Conservancy planned not simply to conserve populations of pre-Columbian plants and animals, but to restore a pre-Columbian landscape. The two goals are similar, but not identical. Conservation allows for a possible co-existence of species; restoration is a type of biological cleansing, an "exorcism of the exotics" (Holloway 31) that requires that all European elements be removed in order to recreate an archaic scene. The Nature Conservancy considered it necessary to eliminate the sheep as quickly as possible, and, in December, 1981, it instituted a program of shooting them (Schuyler 1993). By June of 1989, over 37,000 sheep had been killed. The success of the restoration program has been compromised by some of its consequences. The extermination of grazing animals has, for example, encouraged the unwanted expansion of the introduced fennel, which now dominates 10% of the Nature Conservancy property and is spreading more rapidly than other species.
One study notes that "the most important factor contributing to the recent expansion of fennel was the rapid removal of cattle and feral sheep from Santa Cruz Island" (Brenton and Klinger 1994; also Beatty and Licari 1992; Klinger, Schuyler and Sterner 1994). In the ecosystem which evolved in the 20th century, grazing activities had served a beneficial role in restricting the spread of introduced plants and thus in maintaining a diversified biotic community on the Island. It was unlimited grazing, rather than simply grazing, which was so destructive. The Nature Conservancy acknowledges that its removal of grazing animals may have precipitated the unwelcome explosion of fennel and it is now trying to eliminate the fennel by a combination of controlled burns and herbicides, which kill native as well as non-native plants (Dash and Gliessman 1994; Burns 1997a, 1997b and 1998; Hamm 1998; Aschehoug 2001). Another unanticipated result of the shooting of the sheep has been an increase in the population of feral pigs, which has grown from several hundred to several thousand (Pearl, Patton and Lohr 1994). In addition, golden eagles that have been attracted to the Island by the abundant supply of piglets are hunting to extinction the indigenous Santa Cruz Island fox (Van De Kamp 2000; Davison 2003; Schoch 2003). The fox population plummeted from about 1500 in 1994 to fewer than 100 in 2003. Against the pigs, the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy are planning โan all-out assault, including the use of rifle squads" (Polakovic 1999). Former Park Superintendent, Tim Setnicka, called the planned assault โthe last big roundupโ, even though the pigs will be shot, rather than removed from the Island alive (Polakovic 1999; Kelly 2002). The grim determination to eradicate the pigs is described by one reporter thus: "Like the Pentagon facing an entrenched army, the Park Service is girding for an all-out war on pigs on Santa Cruz Island. There will be no prisoners taken in this campaign" (Burns 2001). Militaristic metaphors figure prominently in discussions about eradicating feral animals, and they have the effect of framing the issue as a moral one, in which the forces of "good" (humans) are engaged in a contest with the forces of "evil" (feral animals). To save the few remaining foxes, bald eagles are being brought in to drive out the golden eagles (Polakovic 1999; Todd 2004). These experiments in restoration reveal the problems inherent in suddenly removing elements from a biotic community on a species by species basis. They should instruct us of the complex interactions of the various elements of the present day Island ecology and the need to take into account the contributions of the introduced animals. They should certainly lead us to question whether restoration, as distinct from conservation, is a feasible goal, and, if not, why animals are being shot in pursuit of it.
Like the Nature Conservancy, the National Park Service wishes to recreate a pre-Columbian scene. However its mandate, as stated in the General Management Plan, is not simply to restore wilderness, but to open it for the pleasure of human visitors (National Park Service 1985, pp. 81 and 82). This mandate is flawed by an internal contradiction, because humans of European descent are, of course, as much an anachronism as sheep and pigs in a pre-Columbian landscape. Nonetheless, the Park Service, in accordance with its charge, has constructed camp grounds and hiking trails and encourages people to enjoy the experience of placing themselves in a scene which approximates the pristine wilderness of an earlier period. Ironically it has also left standing structures built by the ranchers, in order to retain the "historic scene" of the ranching era, but without the ranch animals (National Park Service 1985, pp. 36, 37, 41, 44 and 45). The projected increase in annual human visitors to the Island will contribute to the degradation of the land and adjacent ocean water. The Park Service has no tolerance, however, for other non-native species, and had planned to shoot the feral sheep, pigs and horses once it took possession of the east end. In fact, in the days surrounding the Park Service takeover on February 10, 1997, about 1000 sheep were shot near the boundary between the National Park and The Nature Conservancy properties (Burns 1997a). The Nature Conservancy, as mentioned above, had been shooting sheep since 1981, but in relative secrecy because access to the property was very restricted. However the shootings in the early part of 1997, which coincided with the opening of the Park property, received considerable media attention. The public responded with outrage to newspaper reports and television film of wounded sheep trying to crawl to safety, of lambs starving by their dead mothers, and of rotting carcasses strewn on the hillsides. Yielding to public pressure, but not admitting wrong-doing, the Park Service rounded up the sheep and send them to the mainland for sale at a livestock auction (Burns 1997a; MacGregor 1997; Schultz 1997; Polakovic 1999). (The horses were moved off the island to a horse sanctuary.) Public disapproval of the shooting was prompted by two considerations: that it was wasteful, because the carcasses were left to rot or be eaten by carrion birds, and that it was cruel, because wounded sheep and nursing lambs were left to suffer. People thus reacted in the same way that most of us do to the accounts of bison hunts -- and with the same moral concern, that is, that the reasons for killing the animals did not justify the cruelty and wantonness of the process. However proponents of the sheep killing dismissed the criticisms as sentiments expressed by people ignorant of the goals of habitat restoration. The issue I want to explore here is whether there is, in fact, a similarity between the reasons for shooting sheep and the reasons for shooting bison. Restorationists will argue that bison were killed by people whose interests were selfishly anthropocentric, whereas feral sheep and pigs are killed by people whose interest is the repair of damage done to the environment by previous generations of thoughtless humans. The goals certainly seem distinct, but there is a common denominator here: it is we humans who make the determination that a species does not "fit in", that it has "to go", and we make this determination on the basis of whether the existence of that species conflicts with our own interests -- our interests at one time being economic expansion, at another time being the pleasure of visiting restored landscapes. Eric Aschehoug, a Nature Conservancy biologist, has said about the slaughter of pigs on Santa Cruz Island: "We are interested in restoring an island. Unfortunately, the pigs are in the way" (Kelly 2002).
Our interest in turning back the ecological clock and recreating a landscape which existed before the introduction of European species is controversial. Consider the comments of William Cronon, arguing for the need for a critical reassessment of our ideas about nature and wilderness (Cronon 1996, p. 24). "Recent scholarship has clearly demonstrated that the natural world is far more dynamic, far more changeable, and far more entangled with human history than popular beliefs about โthe balance of natureโ have typically acknowledged. Many popular beliefs about the environment are premised on the conviction that nature is a stable, holistic, homeostatic community capable of preserving its balance more or less indefinitely if only humans can avoid โdisturbingโ it. This is in fact a deeply problematic assumption. โโSimilarly Mark Sagoff, arguing against "all-out battles" against exotic species, comments that "ecosystems lack order, purpose, and design; they have no balance to disrupt" (2000). Species introductions and environmental change take place without anthropogenic influences. Had Santa Cruz Island remained until this day entirely free of any European human invasion, it would still not be the same as it was in 1400 AD. And even if we were able now to restore its 1400 AD scene, its proximity to the mainland will produce repeated introductions of โexoticโ plants and animals through the actions of winds, currents, and human visitors. Therefore restoration will be an on-going process, managed by humans, and requiring constant intervention. The result -- the conservation of native species -- is arguably desirable, but the process of achieving and maintaining a pre European scene will be only as โnaturalโ an activity as is landscape architecture. It is human will and technology that convert wilderness to garden, and garden to wilderness. And it is a paradox that the ideology of nature and wilderness which abhors anthropogenic changes must also depend on anthropogenic changes to reconstruct landscapes.
Restorationists contrast their assignment of intrinsic value to the natural world with the view that nature is valuable only for human exploitation. Kate Faulkner, chief of natural resources for the Channel Islands National Park, says "we used to value the islands for commodity production and now we're in a new era of restoration and environmental protection of natural plants and removal of animals that are causing lots of destruction" (Polakovic 1999). Restoration requires the disruption of an existing ecosystem which is deemed to be "unnatural". Consider the polarization expressed in the comment that "introduced animals represent a deadly threat to the natural ecosystem of the islands" (Schoenherr, Feldmeth and Emerson 1999). Justification for restoration relies, first, on the construction of conceptual distinctions between "native" and "introduced", โindigenousโ and โexoticโ, โwildโ and โferalโ -- distinctions which may not be tenable in situations where the so-called โexoticโ species are actually โnativeโ elements of the present biotic community -- and, second, on the construction of preferences for โindigenousโ, โnativeโ and โwildโ. However restorationists do not simply prefer one group over another; they dismiss the other group as having no value at all and no claim for moral consideration. Having been deprived of their commodity value, the feral animals that "are causing lots of destruction" are granted no intrinsic value.
Feral animals are animals that were once domesticated, or whose ancestors were once domesticated, but have escaped or been released from their interdependence with human beings. Although self-sufficient and free-roaming, they differ from animals that we term โwildโ because they belong to those species, very small in number, which have been domesticated and they can, if captured, become domesticated. There is a difference, for example, between a horse and a zebra, the former belonging to a species whose members can be trained to work with and for humans, the latter to a species whose members remain intractable, even if the occasional zebra can be taught a trick. Feral animals have undoubtedly been a phenomenon since the time that humans first began to utilize animals, but the separation of feral animals into a category distinct from wild animals is a recent development. We are generally not interested in making the distinction unless the feral animals are frustrating our attempts to conserve other species or to recreate a landscape. For example, free-ranging horses and pigs in other parts of California are referred to simply as โwild horsesโ and โwild pigsโ. Farmers and ranchers, for example, include free-roaming horses and pigs in the category of wild animals such as deer, and target them for extermination when they destroy cultivated areas, compete with domesticated animals for resources, and endanger human economic well- being. Restorationists, however, call the free-roaming pigs of Santa Cruz Island โferalโ in order to deny them any claim to be part of the wild (i.e. "natural") landscape. During the millennia that humans have been herders and cultivators, we have prospered, both by establishing a co-dependent relationship with a few tractable species (Diamond 1997), and by ruthlessly eliminating any species which threatened our food supply by occupying land we wanted to farm, or by eating crops we planted, or by preying on our livestock. Our ancestors constructed both physical and mental boundaries between domesticated space, which was predictable and safe because humans had imposed order, and wilderness, which seemed chaotic and unsafe because it was beyond our control. In the traditions of Classical art and literature, it was not trackless forests and rugged mountains that inspired artists, but rather landscapes of orchards and pastures. The pastoral scene demonstrated an ideal situation where elements of nature lived together peacefully, controlled, but also protected by the pastor, which is the Latin word for "shepherd", "the man who ensures a safe pasture for his flocks". The use of the image of the "good shepherd" as a religious metaphor for the benevolent deity indicates that the imperative to secure pastoral regions was given an ethical as well as an economic dimension.
Only recently have we begun to reconsider our place in nature and to admit that our promotion of our own species has been achieved at the expense of most other species. As we calculate the damage done by our exploitative practices, we have developed an appreciation for the scientific, aesthetic, and spiritual values of uncivilized areas. It is not coincidental, of course, that American society is now overwhelmingly urban, which means that we can cherish wild-ness without experiencing its threats directly. Today fewer than 5% of the American people make their living directly from agriculture. Most of us never see, much less touch, care for or worry about protecting, the animals whose flesh we eat or whose skins and wool we wear. They no longer share our lives of domestic security and, hidden from view in factory farms and feed lots, they are seldom objects of our moral concern. On the other hand, we now rarely feel threatened by wild animals. Comfortably ensconced in our urban jungles, we no longer perceive deer as pests who devour our grain fields, or wolves as predators who kill our sheep and cattle. In fact, we now romanticize wild species. The wolf, for example, once hunted to near extinction, has been converted from a frightening icon of unrestrained violence to a cherished icon of unrestrained freedom. And, as we assign a high value to wild species, we also develop an interest in conserving their habitat. In most cases, this new system of valuation has produced positive results and encouraged us to consider the interests of animal and plant species which we have never domesticated. Bison, for example, are no longer seen as our competitors for land use. The animals described by the Pullman car hunters as clumsy and stupid have now become symbols of American strength and independence. In reality, of course, bison could no longer exist independent of human management plans. Having reduced their population from millions to thousands, we restrict their movement to designated areas, and we control and protect them within the boundaries we have established. The very process of managing wild species and defining preserves for them blurs the traditional distinctions between wild and domesticated space. Thus, in our modern post-pastoral world, we have ironically become the shepherds of wild species. Sometimes we even bring them into our urban spaces to care for them. For example, indigenous foxes from Santa Cruz Island have been removed to a mainland zoo for protection.
At the same time, however, that we are willing to endorse human management of wild species, we continue to cherish the illusion that wild and civilized spaces, or natural and human activities, are mutually-exclusive realms. We have retained the conceptual dichotomy developed by our ancestors, but with two modifications important to this discussion: we now assign an intrinsic value to wild species, but we have removed feral animals from the category of โwildโ. On Santa Cruz Island, the alternative to shooting the sheep was to assign them to the category of domesticated animals and ship them to a livestock market, that is, to assign them value only as commodities. For the biologists and managers of the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy, the process of the sheepโs adaptation to their environment is of no interest to the study of natural processes.
In areas that we choose to โre-wildโ -- a term used by some proponents of restoration (Soule and Noss 1998) -- the presence of feral animals like sheep and pigs offends us because we associate these species with cultivated landscapes.We therefore label the animals as โmisfitsโ and refuse to accept them as a natural element of the landscape into which they were born and are therefore native. Frank Mayer noted that โthe buffalo didnโt fit in with the white manโs encroaching civilization โฆ so he had to go.โ Today, feral sheep and pigs donโt fit in with restoration plans or with our changing vision of how the non-urban environment should look, so they have to go. The words โintroducedโ and โexoticโ have replaced โpredatorโ and โpestโ as terms which destine an animal for extermination.
The restoration experiments on Santa Cruz Island have indicated that the rapid and total removal of sheep produces new ecological problems, and that limited grazing may be a better strategy if the goal is to insure the survival of a pre-Columbian species. Nonetheless, many restorationists argue for the total removal of feral animals. Their goal is not simply the protection of some species, which can be achieved
without the violent removal of others, but also the re-creation of a landscape from the days of yesteryear, a scene which humans can visit, but where feral animals are unwelcome because they remind us of our exploitative practices and shatter our illusion that we have constructed a pristine wilderness. Our ancestors took pride in their ability to convert wilderness into civilization; we take pride in our efforts to turn a few cultivated areas into a semblance of their former appearance, and we do not want the presence of feral animals to ruin the picture that we have created.
The disdain for feral animals is linked to the contempt for domesticated animals which many environmentalists express, even as they enjoy the products of the environmentally damaging and bio-uniform meat and wool industries. For example, deep ecologists have argued that the development of agriculture initiated a regrettable separation of humans from "nature" and that domesticated animals, being both a process and product of agriculture, can therefore never be accepted as a part of "wilderness" (Foreman 1991, p. 69). Defending their practices against criticism that restored areas are human artifacts (Elliot 84, Katz 85), restorationists argue that they facilitate, not fake nature." Any restoration is an artifact at the moment that it is deliberately arranged, but it gradually ceases to be so as spontaneous nature returns -- if humans back off and let nature takes its course" (Rolston 91). Restorationists deplore, however, the natural processes which occur when humans "back off" and abandon their domesticated species (their artifacts), and when spontaneous nature takes it course and these species survive and thrive. Many environmentalists agree with J. Baird Callicott's derisive comment that farm animals "have been bred to docility, tractability, stupidity and dependency." They could not, he believes, exist in a wild state. If abandoned, they could not cope with freedom and would "hang around farm outbuildings waiting forlornly to be sheltered and fedโฆ Most would starve" (Callicott 1980). It is curious that environmentalists frequently define our obligations to animal species on the basis of assumptions about whether an animal would or would not take pleasure in being free of our control. We are encouraged to consider the interests of roaming bison and soaring eagles; cattle and chickens, however, warrant only disdain. In fact, in our modern factory farms, we confine chickens in crowded, windowless buildings, prevent them from fulfilling natural functions, and then despise them for not being free. As Karen Davis, writing about factory farmed chickens, notes, we victimize our victims, and justify our abuse of them by maintaining that they donโt deserve moral consideration because they are the stupid, fragile creatures we have turned them into (Davis 1995). They relinquished their claim to moral consideration when they allowed themselves to be exploited and to be robbed by us of their โwildโ and โnaturalโ characteristics (Budiansky 1992).
Environmentalists disparage domesticated species for their presumed dependence and weakness (once a source of comfort to us), and cherish the wild species which, until quite recently, we killed because they were "misfits" and, as Frank Mayer said, "could not be controlled or domesticated. "And, even as the buffalo hunters described their prey as stupid, lazy and clumsy, perhaps to rationalize their slaughter, environmentalists like Callicott use similar terms to defend their violence and deprive animals of moral concern.
We are responsible for putting domesticated species into an alien environment, but now we despise them for being there because their presence does not correspond with the concept of wilderness and nature which we have recently come to cherish. And yet, the sheep and pigs abandoned on Santa Cruz Island have proved wrong Callicottโs comments about stupidity and dependence. They have demonstrated an impressive capacity to survive even if their ancestors were "ruined" by millennia of human husbandry, and they deserve our respect if we are sincere in our professions of regard for natural processes. If, moreover, it can be proved that we cannot protect the interests of pre-Columbian species or promote bio-diversity unless we restrict or phase out the grazing of feral animals (Simberloff 1994, on the fragility of island ecosystems), there are less violent methods of reducing sheep and pig populations, such as chemical sterilization (Kirkpatrick, Turner, Liu, and Fayrer-Hosken 1996). Not only would non-violent methods of animal control address the moral issues of causing painful deaths, but a gradual reduction may also address the practical issue of managing the imported plants which had earlier been suppressed by grazing (Brenton and Klinger 1994). I am not suggesting that we abandon our desire to conserve other species, but rather that we develop a system of values which would accommodate the interests of all animals, not just those to which we choose to give preference in our own particular decade or century.
The reasons for shooting bison and shooting feral sheep are similar in that both species were targeted for eradication because they violated our idea of what a particular landscape should look like, and our preference for how the land should be used. Thus, although we may believe that our attitudes toward the natural world have undergone a fundamental conversion, and that we are now more sensitive to the interests of other species, we are actually following a very old paradigm: we exterminate, without moral reservation, any species we determine to be a "misfit".
i do think itโs kinda hilarious how the self proclaimed leftists on this website have infinitely more tolerance and sympathy for religious people than they do for vegans
yes many vegans are annoying but at least they have a moral stance that comes from what they have observed to happen in The Real World and that is based on their personal ethical and political values irt harm and violence
on the other hand absolutely baffling amounts of leftists on here act like religion is something that just happens to you and has nothing to do with your politics or how you move socially within the wider contexts. you can test out this dichotomy by asking someone whether they would respect someoneโs efforts to keep their kitchen kosher or not have pork or indeed any animal products in their home for religious reasons despite it inconveniencing you versus if they would respect this situation if the person asking to have no animal products in their home was ideologically vegan
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