We have our winner for this week from the august academic journal Feminism and Psychology, which hits the quadrifecta: eco-feminism, gendered something-something, race (can’t ever leave out race), and animals.
Roosters, hawks and dawgs: Toward an inclusive, embodied eco/feminist psychology
pattrice jones, Social Sciences, MCTC, 1501 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55403
Abstract
The gendered exploitation of roosters used in cockfighting is a case example of the social construction of gender via animals — a psychosocial process that injures both people and animals. Similar processes of social construction by way of animals occur in relation to race and sexual orientation, with similarly mutually hurtful results. The rehabilitation of roosters used in cockfighting illustrates the utility of an expanded and amended conception of Herman’s principles of trauma recovery enacted within the emerging insights of trans-species psychology. Those insights lead us toward a truly inclusive eco/feminist psychology centered on acceptance of situated human animality and an understanding of traumatic alienation as a factor in both personal and communal problems in living, including climate change. This perspective shifts the ground for clinical practice, mandating explicit attention not only to interpersonal and intrapsychic cleavages but also to schisms between self and nature, other animals, and one’s own animality.
You can actually download this complete article for free, unlike the usual $35 Sage Publishing charges but never gets for most of their articles. Here’s the lede:
I write from a sanctuary for chickens. The roosters are very loud. All day long, they keep in touch with one another by crowing, as their ancestors evolved to do in the dense jungles of South Asia. . .
At least this begins in plain English. But you know where it’s going to end up:
Ecopsychology has long been charged with another sort of exclusivity: failure to attend adequately to race and class (Anthony, 1995). Similarly, despite the occasional nod to feminist spirituality (see, for example, Roszak, 1995), ecopsychologists are far more likely to speak metaphorically of the rape of the earth than to grapple authentically with the prevalence of violence against women. Ecofeminist theory offers a means by which ecopsychology can become more inclusive in every way.
Well that’s certainly a relief. Wouldn’t want exclusivity to go unchallenged. What?
[Hat tip, as always, to @Real—peerreview on Twitter.]
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