critical animal studies | New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies

As I’m sure many of you did, I watched the video of Donald Trump saying “quiet piggy” to a female journalist, Catherine Lucey, yesterday with horror. But also with deep sadness: sadness caused by the fact this wasn’t a career-ending statement for a man in public office. How low we seem to have sunk.

I was also struck by his demeanour. He seemingly leant in close to her and pointed in her face as he said those words. Acts of a bully, maybe, but certainly acts of a man who thinks he can legitimately demean and control women. And that he can do so by referring to them as animals.

The use of pig as an insult here was no coincidence. It was a deliberate attempt to silence a woman, put her in ‘her place’ and undermine her professional credibility.

Moreover, it was likely intended as a comment on her looks and/or behaviour, given the cultural association of pigs and ugliness. For example, Aaron Stibbe in his analysis of the British National Corpus – 100 million words taken from a wide range of media and everyday speech – found that pigs feature more than any other animal in our idioms, metaphors and similes. They featured in the corpus in non-literal usage 62 times. And the vast majority of those uses were negative – e.g., ‘awful pig’, ‘as fat as a pig’, ‘making a pig of herself’.

In short this seemingly candid moment caught on camera was an exercise of misogynistic power; one that goes beyond mere sexism.

Richardson-Self argues that sexism includes a ‘justificatory component’, providing reasons that men are naturally superior to women: A hierarchical belief system that is then idealised to support a patriarchal gender order. Misogyny, however, has a ‘hostility component’, that directs hostility toward women who are seen to be subverting deeply held patriarchal norms. A female reporter – and one who dared question the behaviour of a (powerful, white) man – in an entrenched patriarchal political space might well be seen to subverting patriarchal norms.

But Trump’s use of the word ‘piggy’ goes beyond sexism and misogyny. It is also a form of speciesism. Here, sexism and speciesism work together to construct women as inferior because of their perceived closeness to nature – something we see in a focus on their/our bodies as well as in sayings like “putting lipstick on a pig”.

Feminist animal studies scholars have long demonstrated the way language assists in the oppression of both women and other animals. In 1995 Joan Dunayer in Sexist Words, Speciesist Roots argued, “Symbolically associating women with “animal” assists in their oppression. Applying images of denigrated nonhuman species to women labels women inferior and available for abuse” (p. 11).

And, of course, Carol Adams in The Sexual Politics of Meat pointed out how referring to both animals and women as meat is a function of cultures that see both as objects to be consumed.

In other words, as Dunayer pointed out, this form of language use assists in normalising the oppression of other animals: “With contemptuous words, humans establish and maintain emotional distance from other animals” (p. 18).

She notes that pigs in particular are a focus of misuse in this way because they are bred purely to be killed. This, she argues (using the work of Leach [1964]) is a shameful thing that leads to the shame being attached to the pigs themselves: “using pig” as a pejorative lends acceptability to their massive abuse” (p. 18).

More recently researchers have linked the use of animalised slurs aimed at women to the highly toxic, misogynistic and hate-full Manosphere. Here, animal metaphors are used to describe women who are considered too ugly to have sex with (‘seals’, ‘whales’), women who are considered sexually appealing (‘bunny’, ‘vixen’), and to make comment about women’s mental abilities and their presumed willingness to manipulate men (‘vixen’, ‘viper’). As well as normalising the oppression of both animals and women these discursive tactics, the authors argue, are clear examples of one of the phases to online extremism – dehumanization.

Research into online extremism consistently shows links between violence against women, extremist ideologies and hostile sexism. It also shows there are crossovers between extremist misogynist groups and online child abuse. Research has also shown links between right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and the acceptance of animal exploitation.

I don’t know about you but I’m seeing patterns here. The main connection seems to be an assumed right to power based on a hierarchical understanding of the world. In turn that power often expresses itself as hate for the Other, in this case women and other animals.

To return to my opening sentiment then, watching a man with political power refer to a woman as a ‘piggy’ is truly horrifying.

And it seems as though there is an unexamined understanding of this. Take for example, Hank Green’s bluesky post: “I don’t know why the “Piggy” thing is bothering me so much. It’s one more unforgivable thing in a list of 20,000 unforgivable things, but I’ve been mad about it for like 12 straight hours”.

Despite this, most of the outrage directed at this event refuses to analyse the connections between the discursive positioning of women, other animals and oppression.

Perhaps because sexism and misogyny are (at least nominally) frowned upon but speciesism isn’t?

And yet, we won’t end one without the other.

Artwork credit: Heather Fraser

Reposted from Animals in Society: Animal Studies Scholar Advocacy

I (Nik Taylor) teach a critial animal studies class at the University of Canterbury in Aotearoa New Zealand. The class, Humans, Animals and Society, takes a broadly sociological approach to the study of human relationships with other animals by focussing on the ways that our – arbitrary – social construction of other animals impacts their (mal)treatment and normalised oppression in everyday practices.

One of the challenges in this class for both teachers and learners is the confrontational nature of the content (I’ve written, with Heather Fraser, more about teaching controversial issues in animal studies in this volume, Teaching Liberation). As a result of these challenges, I’m always looking for ways to help students manage the feelings the material inevitably brings up. This year, with the helps of Julie Wuthnow and Roseanna Brailsford from the University of Canterbury’s Academic Skills centre, I set a digital storytelling assignment for the students.

Digital storytelling, when used in a shcolarly setting, ‘involves students integrating academic research, scholarly communication, and digital skills to create digital content’ (Schrum et al, 2021). It has the potential to ensure students are engaged in authentic learning particularly when the problems the assessment focusses on are complex and often ill-defined (as they are in human-animal relations), and it can also lead to/augment the kinds of transformative pedadgogy that my particular course is based on (Schrum et al, 2021).

Students were set the task of creating a 1-2 minute video on one aspect of how their relationship to and/or thinking about other animals had changed throughout the course. The assignment was integrated throughout the course with several workhops over the duration of the semester focussing on scripting, story structure, and, using relevant technology, and we showed all the videos (students could choose to opt out) in a final session of the course.

Student feedback indicates that they very much enjoyed the task, seeing it as a chance to get creative, as something different from the usual essay based work they were set, and as something that helped them think through the various emotional repsonses they had to the course material. At the end of the final class, I aksed students if they would be willing to have their videos hosted on this site, and several of them gave their permission. You can see those videos below.