The need for feminism

Long before I became interested in veganism and animal rights, I was an ardent feminist and supporter of women’s rights. I still am, although it has taken a backseat to my passion for promoting animal rights.  While I don’t see animal rights as being more important than women’s rights, the tremendous numbers of animals that are killed, mutilated and tortured and who have their homes and habitats sacked, polluted and destroyed, the extreme degree of cruelty and torture that we inflict upon animals such as boiling them alive or ripping their skin off while alive, and the breadth and depth speciecism which allows such rampant abuses to occur, forces me to focus most of my attention on animal rights.  However, I recognise that animal rights, women’s rights and other human rights are related and interlinked; that sexism, speciecism, racism, etc., are similar psychological processes and constructs.

In the past, before I became aware of the atrocities committed to animals and my own speciecism, I was similarly shocked and disturbed by how 50 % of the human species, i.e. women, could be treated so poorly and have so few rights to varying degrees in different parts of the world. That this unequal respect and treatment was the norm for almost all cultures for millennia was (and is) deeply disturbing to me and I concluded that the gains that some women have achieved in some countries was extremely fragile. The natural inclination to discriminate and dominate women appears to be deeply ingrained in men.  This reinforced the need for feminism and to continue to fight for women’s rights, respect and dignity all over the world, including those countries where significant gains have been made. Even in the west, where things are better for women, women still suffer from sexism, rape, objectification, discrimination and domestic violence. There is still much to be done.

I just finished reading the poignant, beautiful and tragic novel, “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini which has prompted me to revisit my previous passion for women’s rights. The book centres on two women in Afghanistan whose lives are held captive by men, the patriarchy and a lack of legal rights and social supports to allow them to break free from the domestic abuse and enslavement they face daily.  It is also about their relationship with each other, their strength and love. I highly recommend it because it is a great narrative and it allows the reader to care deeply about the characters. Through the narrative the reader can see how dangerous it is to allow men to make all the decisions on behalf of women and not to have laws that are enforced to protect women’s rights.  If there are no enforceable laws, any degree of extreme cruelty and violence can be inflicted upon the vulnerable without any repercussions for the guilty.  This allows ordinary people/men to become brutal slave masters. This is similarly the case with animals today all over the world who have almost zero laws to protect them from death, violence and confinement inflicted upon them by humans. 

The violence, disrespect and loss of liberty that these two women faced was appalling and tragic, and made my heart go out to all the women who have experienced such violence at home. It doesn’t just happen in Afghanistan or the Middle East.  A white South Africa man was convicted of holding his wife captive at home and inflicting upon her the most vicious and brutal physical violence that has left her permanently physically damaged for the rest of her life. This is of course an extreme case, but it goes to show you it happens everywhere. South Africa is actually not a good place to be a woman – physical and emotional abuse, murder and rape of women are extremely common despite laws that make this illegal.   I recommend this resource from the Rape Crisis Trust Cape Town which provides some possible explanations of why rape and violence against women is so high in South Africa.  We have to try understand the problem if we are to eradicate it. 

While animal rights may always be my first focus, I believe I also have a duty to South Africa, to help make it a better place and women’s rights would be an excellent place to start.  Violence spreads, like a cold, from person to person, from person to animal.  The greater violence people experience in their day-to-day lives the less likely they are to care about the suffering of animals and the more likely they are to perpetrate violence to animals.  That’s a generalization of course. Some people who have been hurt, oppressed and dominated by others, indeed empathize more deeply with animals who are also hurt and opporessed and find great comfort in helping and spending time with innocent creatures.