San Francisco Sentinel
January 26, 1990
Street Talk
Fish on a Soapbox
By Doris Fish
Arts Writer
“Save the Pigs!” was the headline for a discarded column I started some weeks back. It was not very amusing, with long turgid ramblings about the shocking cruelties inflicted on our porcine brothers for no other reason than that their flesh is unfortunately sweet.
Another unprinted column, titled “Speciesism”, the arrogant notion that humankind is superior to all other forms of life on the plane, was also devoid of humor.
Yet another rejected idea was “Women and the Hope of the World” in which I suggested a return to a matriarchal society would be the best solution to all this world’s ills. Another unfunny column.
I know this is going to sound like I’m dumping on men, but as much as we adore the bastards, they’ve fucked up the world for too long. The prevailing patriarchal mindset is the root of all inequality and the cause of the destruction of our environment. Shepherd Bliss, in a letter to the B.A.R. last week, has termed the resultant behavior “toxic masculinity”, in which all negative aspects of manliness are manifested. Conflict, destruction, enslavement, sexism, racism, classism and a host of other ills can be traced to our patriarchal hierarchy, a system in which differences are seen as either superior or inferior; male is superior to female, black is inferior to white, heterosexual is better than homo, and animals are far below humans. In our own community there is the “rule” that “straight-acting” is preferred to “gay-acting” behavior. Sissies are still anathema to even a lot of politically correct gays.
The superiority problem manifests itself most insidiously in “speciesism”. Just because we’ve developed television and supermarkets doesn’t mean we’re necessarily more qualified to be caretakers of this planet. If you think our greater intelligence and civilization give us the right to exploit any other species, then imagine an even superior species to us running things. Would their greater intelligence give them to right to breed us for food? Could they justify using our children in laboratory experiments because their own offspring might be saved from some disease? Imagine that they ate your mother then cured her skin to make pants and vests to wear to their bars. (No one could possibly make a nice ensemble from my mother, but you see what I mean.) Yet we can justify all these atrocities if we imagine them not happening to people we love but to less intelligent beings: pigs, rabbits, and cows. The face that these particular “little brothers” are not endangered species does not ameliorate their suffering; if anything, it increases it. Their very abundance ensures their individual destruction.
In the early days of our own culture, women were considered so lacking in value that they were thought to be a lower life form without souls. Blacks were said to be subhuman species, perhaps a relative of the ape, and this was debated by scientists only one hundred years ago! These are two examples of speciesism which, luckily for the victims, have been upgraded to sexism and racism.
Would it be sexist to suggest that women running the world would be an improvement? Feminists have begun to influence scientists both male and female, and new evidence of the role of women in ancient cultures has been collected. Respected female scholars talk of Goddess worshipping societies, matriarchal cultures in which, according to Marti Keel, co-founder of Feminists for Animal Rights, “(humans) were seen as integral parts of the natural world. (They) worshipped both plants and animals, who were viewed as inextricably connected through a common source, the sacred Mother Earth.” And (from Sunday Punch last week) archaeologist Marija Gimbutas tells of an ancient European matriarchal society in her book, The Language of the Goddess, which “created superb pottery and sculptures. This was a long-lasting period of remarkable creativity and stability, an age free of strife.”
Warmongers are out of fashion, and peace-loving, planet-loving people are gaining in numbers and influence. We could be on the threshold of a new social structure, based on compassion and peace, where differences of color or sex or species will be viewed as beautiful, varying parts of a glorious, harmonious whole. Can you feel it coming? I know it’s elitist of me, but I’m sure gay people will once again be in the forefront.
