COW, CUNT, CRIP: TOWARD and Goods

Thresholds 48 KIN as commodities, their bodies turned into food COW, CUNT, CRIP: TOWARD and goods. In the ad, Anderson presentsTOWARD herself as CRIP: CUNT, COW, livestock: cows or pigs for consumption. As an A TRANSSPECIES, insult, “cow” is typically wielded against women, TRANSSPECIES, A used to describe them as fat and taking up space.3 ANTI-ABLEIST FEMINISM To be a pig is also to be greedy or overindulgent. FEMINISM ANTI-ABLEIST More and worse animal insults are lodged against people of color.4 Of course, Anderson is not a cow Emily Watlington in any sense of the word: she has come to represent the pinnacle of normative beauty standards as a tan, thin, white, blonde woman with large breasts Fig. 1 Pamela Anderson in a PETA ad made in 2010. who starred in Baywatch and worked as a Playboy Courtesy of PETA. Playmate. Feminists have analogized their own In July of 2010 Pamela Anderson was set to debut 1 Josée Rochefort quoted objectification to that of meat, refusing to be con- a billboard in Montreal, which she had made in in “Pamela Anderson PETA sidered mere flesh for consumption and domination, Plan Denied,” Hollywood Re- collaboration with People for the Ethical Treatment rather than sentient subjects.5 But why should porter, July 15, 2010, https:// of Animals (PETA). It read ALL ANIMALS HAVE www.hollywoodreporter.com/ animals, who are also sentient subjects, be treated THE SAME PARTS and HAVE A HEART, GO news/pamela-anderson- like “meat”? VEGETARIAN (Fig. 1). A photograph of Anderson’s peta-plan-denied-25521. Anderson’s gesture asserts that she is an animal, bikini-clad body was outlined and sectioned as if 2 Dan Mathews quoted in and that’s not a bad thing. “What if instead of “Pamela Anderson’s Nearly in preparation for the butcher, labeled “rump,” Naked PETA Ad Banned in demeaning us,” asks disability and animal rights “ribs,” “breast,” etc. But while Anderson was in Canada,” US Magazine, July 15, activist Sunaura Taylor, “claiming animality could town for the ad’s premiere, the Canadian govern- 2010, https://www.usmagazine. be a way of challenging the violence of animaliza- ment announced that it would not grant PETA a com/celebrity-body/news/ tion and of speciesism—of recognizing that animal pamela-anderson-blocked- https://doi.org/10.1162/thld_a_00720 6 permit to display the billboard. They claimed the from-montreal-event-for-sex- liberation is entangled with our own?” Of seeing work to be degrading to women: it equated us ist-ad-2010157/. how, under capitalism, many different bodies with animals and commodities. Josée Rochefort of 3 See Dana Rosati, “Map- are abused, commodified, and consumed? Taylor the Montreal Film and TV Commission justified ping Milk: The Paradigm of eloquently asks, “How do those of us who have Objectification of the Female her refusal by stating that the ad “goes against all been negatively compared to nonhuman animals Body, from Bovine to Human,” principles public organizations are fighting for in Animal Instances, Spring assert our value as beings without either implying the everlasting battle of equality between men and 2018, https://animalinstances. human superiority or denying our very own women … we, as public officials representing a com/mapping-milk-the- animality?” which, I argue, Anderson achieved— municipal government, cannot endorse this image paradigm-of-objectification- yet it was misread by Canadian officials under of-the-female-body-from- 1 7 of Ms. Anderson.” PETA’s Senior Vice President bovine-to-human/. the rhetoric of a speciesist feminism. Dan Mathews retorted that “city officials are … 4 See Taylor, Beasts of Anderson sells the image of her female body confusing ‘sexy’ with ‘sexist,’” echoing decades-old Burden: Animal and Disability in order to claim solidarity with animals whose debates about the feminist ethics of pornographic Liberation (New York: bodies, like hers, are commodities. Her decision The New Press, 2017), 110. images, and whether their existence reinforces 5 See Carol Adams, The could be framed as one of empowerment in part women’s status as objects to be consumed or its Sexual Politics of Meat: A because she is regarded as capable of consent, regulation figures as yet another restriction on Feminist-Vegetarian Critical whereas animals in factory farms are not. But this women’s sexuality.2 What makes the censorship of Theory (London: Bloomsbury, conception ignores the ways in which nonhuman 1990). Anderson’s ad the Anderson-PETA image so perplexing, however, resembles the cover of the animals often actively express that they do not is that such restrictions are never placed on adver- 2015 edition of the book. consent: to posit them as voiceless is to overlook tisements depicting scantily-clad women used to 6 Taylor, Beasts of the ways in which they cry, express sadness, and sell products by arousing consumers, or to shame Burden, 110. protest their abuse and slaughtering. They don’t use them for not conforming to unrealistic beauty stan- 7 Ibid. the English language to do so, but they communi- dards. The ubiquity of such advertisements suggests cate clearly nonetheless—at least to those who care that it is fine for women to sell their bodies when to listen. Rochefort’s decision to censor the ad doing so does not threaten the status quo: ironi- because she considers the equation of women and cally, the ad was to be shown in a city known for animals offensive also robs Anderson of her agency its strip clubs. The campaign was meant to remind by overriding her consent, effectively suggesting omnivores that humans are animals, too: a simple that she has internalized misogyny and cannot and obvious fact, yet one we tend to ignore. The decide for herself. Legal scholar Maneesha Deckha logic of the censorship frames “animal” as a more takes a similar position in her analysis of PETA ads offensive slur than “object.” that use women’s bodies: she argues that “reducing Being called an animal is indeed often intended women to their bodies in a context of animality, © 2020 Emily© 2020 Watlington as an insult. Animals are frequently encountered whether by presenting them as sexualized ‘bunnies’ 170 171 Thresholds 48 KIN Cow, Cunt, Crip: Toward A Transspecies, Anti-Ableist Feminism or ‘foxes’ or simply connecting their sexualized labor for animals has been disproportionately taken bodies to the idea of animals, solidifies the trajectory on by women, my evidence of this being more of their thinghood.” But this logic reinforces the cultural than statistical. Virginia Woolf noticed this notion that animals are indeed “things,” which is disparity, writing that “The vast majority of birds exactly what Anderson is critiquing. I argue that and beasts have been killed by you [men]; not us.”11 Anderson, like Taylor, reveals instead that concepts Josephine Donovan compiled a list of first-wave of liberation, consent, or autonomous action feminist vegetarians or animal advocates, including are flawed: she insists that if animals are not free, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia then neither are we—or as Martin Luther King Jr. Maria Child, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Stuart Fig. 2 Pamela Anderson representing PETA at Sea famously put it, “injustice anywhere is a threat to Phelps Ward, Victoria Woodhull, Elizabeth Cady World’s annual meeting. PETA holds stock in the 8 justice everywhere.” Stanton, the Grimke sisters, Lucy Stone, Frances Sea World company in order to propose changes to Questions as to if and how women can consent Willard, Frances Power Cobbe, Anna Kingsford, shareholders. Courtesy of PETA. and act freely while unlearning all the ways we’ve Caroline Earle White, and Agnes Ryan.12 Some been taught to see ourselves have long been at the 8 Martin Luther King, Jr., 17 “Vaccines Do Not Cause feminist thinkers have drawn analogies between heart of feminist thought. PETA’s advertisement Gospel of Freedom: Letters Autism,” Center for Disease women and animals without intending to advocate from Birmingham Jail and the could have easily been made with a man, as men, Control, October 27, 2015 for animal liberation: Andrea Dworkin, for example, Struggle that Changed a Na- https://www.cdc.gov/ of course, are animals too. Typically, when we call tion, ed. Jonathan Rieder (New vaccinesafety/concerns/ began to claim solidarity between cunts and cows men “animals,” we refer to the ways they give York: Bloomsbury, 2003), 170. autism.html. in 1974, writing that “judging women according into their natural impulses, or sexually aggressive 9 Taylor, Beasts of Burden, 20. 18 “Autism Risk Linked to to their conformity to a standard of beauty serves instincts, or more generally, their consumption 10 Lin May Saeed, studio visit Particulate Air Pollution,” Sci- to make them into products, chattels, differing from with the artist, November 26, entific American, n.d., https:// with reckless abandon. 2018. This visit occurred while www.scientificamerican. the farmer’s favorite cow only in terms of literal The ad’s message has more impact with a she was in the early stages com/article/autism-risk- form.”13 And, as I’ve shown, women and nonhuman woman’s body. Not only does it touch on notions of preparing for her show that linked-to-particulate-air- animals have been likened to prove their twinned of consent, it also equates the commodification of would later be called “Girl with pollution/. inferiority: Aristotle compared women to animals Cat” at Jacky Strenz gallery 19 Taylor, Beasts of women’s bodies in advertisements and porn alike. in Frankfurt. I reviewed the Burden, 58. in order to illustrate that both lack capacity for 14 It elicits society’s impulses either to protect and show for Artforum online. 20 Nathan J.

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