Marti Kheel has noted at least one male animal rights advocate exulting that "we're no longer a movement of little old ladies in tennis shoes,"[3] as if women's caring for animals were somehow less important than men's caring. Perhaps it is the fact that the widespread (though hardly universal) phenomenon of women's caring for animals makes it somehow commonplace; conversely, the often lamented scarcity of men's caring for animals makes that caring unique, and hence more valued (as scarcity of any commodity tends to do in Western culture). But the denigration of women's passion and compassion for other animal species as "misplaced mothering instincts" reveals a number of patriarchal beliefs:
I can speak to this relationship most forcefully on a personal level. At the age of 25, married, a feminist and an animal rights activists, I was faced with an unplanned pregnancy. By popular estimates, given these circumstances, I "should" have carried and raised the child. But in a few rushed weeks of research on fetal development, couples counselling, and soul-searching, I made the decision to terminate the pregnancy. It was an ethical decision based on feeling and on reason.[4] In that decision, I believed that I was faced with a choice of having the time and energy to care for and act in defense of many animals over the course of the next twenty years, or caring for one central animal, and caring for the others as time allowed. As the example of so many feminist animal activists shows, it is entirely possible to care for children and care for animals at the same time (Carol Adams comes immediately to mind). But those wonderful women were not foremost in my thoughts during the decisionmaking period.
My feminism notwithstanding, the only model, the only image that I had of a successful motherhood was the patriarchal model, in which the woman subordinated (or gave up entirely) her life's work to the care of her child--whether through income-generating work needed to support the family, care-giving work in the home, or, in most cases, a combination of the two. What I decided very clearly was that, given the current situation for animals, I felt it was more urgent to direct the caring energy of my life toward all animal species rather than my own offspring.[5] In my mind, the ethical decision was in one way similar to the description given by the men on the cafe patio: it was a "mothering" decision. That was where our agreement ended. From my perspective, mothering wasn't an "instinct" -- it was a choice, and it was mine, to "place" (not "misplace") wherever I chose.
Of course, from this personal narrative, I do not mean to imply that women's caring for animals assumes or constitutes non-human animals as inferior, subordinate, or childlike. What I do mean to assert is that nonhuman animals are desperately in need of being cared for and cared about, by women and by men, and that this caring can and must take the form not merely of petting or feeding but of active advocacy (sheltering, protesting, authoring and supporting legislation, boycotting, writing and speaking, etc.).
It is not unusual for Western culture to understand when a woman adopts a child and chooses to "mother" it, to care for it. Though the practice has not gained universal acceptance in a racist culture, it is still within the scope of popular understanding if the color of that child is different from the color of the mother. What is not yet understood, however, is when the species of the "child" (i.e., whoever or whatever receives women's caring) differs from the species of the "mother." Calling that caring a "misplaced mothering instinct" is an illustration of the way that the patriarchal institution of motherhood exerts its control over naming, and appropriates women's caring.
But a woman's caring for other animal species is not necessarily "mothering"; rather, as Adrienne Rich has so eloquently argued in Of Woman Born, the institution of mothering has served to imprison, confine, and limit women's caring and women's passions. This institutionalized distortion of motherhood relies on compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory motherhood, and a confinement of women's energies, sexuality, creativity, economic production, and caring to be expressed exclusively within the "traditional" patriarchal family. Certainly, feminists have used this definition of motherhood in subversive ways. For example, describing their social work as a form of mothering (or "social housekeeping"), white middle-class women in the nineteenth century were able to gain some approval and permission (however reluctant) for their actions in the public sphere. Even today, many feminist activists describe their work in terms of mothering (most notably Sara Ruddick.) Where this rhetorical strategy once served to gain freedom for women, the historical moment seems to have changed, and the conceptual framework of mothering may carry more associated baggage than we want or need. As Rich has argued, breaking free from the patriarchal institution of motherhood allows women to direct their caring in many ways, singly or in combination, instead of a limited "focus on the family": one way may surely involve human children; another may involve animals.
From this perspective, women's caring about animals can be seen as an act of defiance against patriarchy, a step outside the institutions that would imprison our passions and our concern. Women's caring about animals is, fundamentally, a feminist act of resistance.
By the time I'd thought through all of this, of course, the men had left. So had the woman and the animal she cared for.