Wednesday, April 2, 2014

the interconnectedness of oppression...

i'm reading a book titled "eternal treblinka" by charles patterson at the moment - it "examines the origins of human supremacy and describes the emergence of industrialized slaughter of both animals and people in modern times"...  it is a powerful exposé of the human capacity for horror that's way beyond anything i thought could exist in the human psyche, let alone reality - it is not an easy read, i shed tears every time i turn a page, yet it is something i am drawn to, repulsed and repelled by, but need to read to its final sentence...

the title is taken from a short story, 'the letter writer' by isaac bashevis singer, polish-born jewish-american author and nobel laureate, in which he states "in relation to them (animals), all people are nazis; for the animals it is an eternal treblinka"... the book is actually dedicated to him...

according to lucy rosen kaplan, former attorney for peta and daughter of holocaust survivors, "in eternal treblinka we are presented for the first time with extensive evidence of the profoundly troubling connections between animal exploitation in the united states and hitler's final solution"...

jane goodall says "charles patterson's book will go a long way towards righting the terrible wrongs that human beings, throughout history, have perpetrated on nonhuman animals."

i'm still reading it, so not yet ready to write about it, but i felt it was time for a new post, however i am so totally pissed off with the human species and their treatment of our nonhuman kin, and so very ashamed to be part of a species that is capable of such horror that i am unable to write a post without rage and hatred, so instead i have opted to share three videos by three womyn i find inspiring and who passionately believe in feminism and nonhuman animal rights... here they 'join the dots' between the oppression of womyn and the oppression of nonhumans...

ruby hamad... "feminism, veganism and patriarchy"...


ashley maier... "violence against women and animal rights"...


both make reference to the wonderful carol j adams... "politics and the absent referent in 2014"...


i hope you find them inspiring... i hope. i implore, you make the connection... it really is time to change the world... 'animal rights' is, without doubt, a fundamental feminist issue... womyn's liberation and 'animal' liberation go hand in hand...

from 'animal rights is a feminist issue'

5 comments:

parlance said...

Did you see there was an article on vegetarianism and veganism in The Age today? I thought of you. I thought you would like the topic being brought to the attention of the general public.

Bea Elliott said...

I'm glad you shared these videos... Everything about being other than man relates to being other than hu-man. It is indeed an interconnected chain of oppression, domination and exploitation. Tired of our species too - But more so, tired of the patriarchal part of it. So violent... So wrong. :/

proud womon said...

hi parlance, thanks for the 'heads-up' on that article... i haven't read it - i couldn't find it online and am interested to see what angle they have taken - hope it's not a dietary angle because veganism is far more than that... the mention of vegetarianism doesn't give me much hope though - the 'dairy' and 'egg' industries are two of the most abusive 'animal' agriculture industries - rape, torture and death are 'part and parcel' of both...

and yes bea, females of all species are oppressed, dominated, subservient and exploited... have been for centuries, still are (fucking christianity, of which most religions are offshoots from and where patriarchal domination stems from!!)...

womyn's liberation is what i've fought for over the years, but that has been watered down so much - 'womyn's libbers' as we were called were considered 'butch, dyke man-haters' - didn't matter our sexuality, heterosexual, homosexual, transgender - we were all a threat because we questioned - so a new term had to be coined - feminist - now womyn could think (not too much though), definitely not question the status quo (maybe a little), dress how 'they' wanted to (so long as they still appealed to men), alter their bodies ('pluck, nip & tuck') - but hey, they were doing it 'for themselves'...

yay feminism - it's gotten to the point now where even men can call themselves 'feminist' (never in my book!!)... male feminist - oxymoron if ever i've heard one...

no wonder crime against females of other species flourishes - crime against human womyn is rampant - we read about it every day - rape, murder, sexual enslavement, and so much more - we still have no power, no worth let alone self-worth, no self-esteem in this patriarchal society...

i despair for our sisters of species when our human sisters subjugate themselves in the misguided belief that they are in control of their lives in this patriarchal world...

i still hear the echo of the womyn's liberation mantra of the 70s - 'smash the church, smash the state, womyn must decide their fate'...

veganelder said...

Eternal Treblinka is one of my all time favorite books about our blindness. That book and David Nibert's Animal Rights/Human Rights were among the first that I ever purchased when I started gathering my small AR library.

proud womon said...

Eternal Treblinka is such a powerful work veganelder... it should be on the compulsory reading list of all schools...