This is SO true. Its truly disconcerting to note how many careless descriptions are thrown around in everyday language that bring speciesism and sexism together. Calling a man a bull or a lion is completely different from calling a woman a couger or a vixen... or a cow or a bitch.
Older women who form relationships with younger men are considered cougars - with all negative connotations - but men who date younger women are simply successful.
The ubiquity of these links in our language displays a discouraging fact: speciesism and sexism are rampant and linked together. I'm also taking Carol MacKay's Emerging Selves class for my TC; we've been studying women's autobiographies and gender relations this semester. This reading really reminded me of what we've been studying in her class.
In Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Woolf discovers "without self-confidence we are babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself...Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its nautral size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle." (35)
Let's face it. OUr society is still significantly patriarchal. Even after years of effort, life is still unequal. As of now, I have yet to face the adverse effects of this, but I know that the workplace is an example in sexist practices. I know that once I become an architect, I will be trying to find my place in a male-dominated field. However, back to the subject at hand.
Sexism and speciesism all exist due to a need for power. Man needs to feel superior, and to make absolutely positively sure he IS at the top of the food chain, he degrades all those "beneath" him. This is a massive oversimplification and generalization to be sure, but it holds truth: a hunger for power and an feeling of insecurity lead people to mistreat those they percieve to be inferior.
" ...In any case, isn't Alice's incredulity rather incredible? She seems, at this moment at least, to believe that one can in fact discern and decide between a human "yes" and "no." She seems confident that when it comes to man it is possible to guess whether yes or no." (597)
Alice and her kitten
We may not be able to completely understand each other - which is why we percieve others different from us to be below our intellect and undeserving of our respect. Isn't that what has led to conflict between nations? Isn't that what wars are based on? Isn't that why men and women always misunderstand each other? But just because we don't communicate through the same "language" doesn't mean we shouldn't try. It doesnt mean we shouldnt respect each other. It doesnt mean others are unworthy of dignity.
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