The Rape of Animals, the Butchering of Women

sexual violence, slaughter, and an ecofeminism perspective

In her 1990 book titled The Sexual Politics of Meat, Carol J. Adams writes, “What is ‘the sexual politics of meat’? It is an attitude and action that animalizes women and sexualizes and feminizes animals. In 2008, we learned about the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who posted materials to a website including a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a partially-dressed man interacting with a sexually aroused farm animal.' The woman, animalized; the animal, sexualized. That's the sexual politics of meat."

Ecofeminist philosophers and writers have often connected the oppression of women with the oppression of animals, and for good reason, too. 

The same Bible that gives man dominion over the animals additionally gives him dominance and power over his wife, while demanding that she be submissive. The same agricultural revolution that brought about the strictly enforced, sexual and economic exploitation of women also brought about the sexual and economic exploitation of animals (while sex-roles and meat eating existed prior to the agricultural revolution, neither were systemically and rigidly enforced in the same manner.)