The Deal With Animals with Marika S. Bell
92: Speciesism and The Chicken Encounter That Changed Everything with Pattrice Jones of VINE Animal Sanctuary (S9)
"If you are interested in making the world better for animals, doing something about climate change, solving any social justice problems, veganism is going to be a necessary step." - Pattrice Jones
Episode 6 of Series 9: Unveiling Vegan Culture Transcript
Discussing the realities of racism, sexism, and speciesism, we explore how these issues are not standalone problems but are intricately linked. Vine Sanctuary, a beacon of hope and healing, exemplifies the power of community alliances — a sanctuary not just for animals but for humans too, particularly those from marginalized LGBTQ and BIPOC communities.
This episode isn't just about animal activism; it's an exploration of deep-seated ideologies and the political weight of our personal choices.
Guest: Pattrice Jones is a cofounder of VINE Sanctuary, an LGBTQ-led refuge for farmed animals, as well as an internationally recognized ecofeminist scholar and activist. Her new book, Bird's-Eye Views: Queer Queries About Activism, Animals, and Identity, collects essays by Pattrice jones on numerous topics relevant to human-animal relations.
Book Recommendation: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl
Other Links: The Oxen at the Intersection by Pattrice Jones
Episodes Like This:
E16: Antiracism in Animal Advocacy Part 1
E22: Ecofeminism and Entangled Empathy
E28: Animal Care Deserts, Accessibility and Love…
Show Credits Thank you also to John Lasala for his beautiful music and audio engineering on Series 11!
Read the Blog! (Guest profiles, book recommendations, trailers and more!)
What to start your own podcast in he Animal Advocacy or Animal Welfare Space? Check out my Podcast Mentoring Services!
"If you are interested in making the world better for animals, doing something about climate change, solving any social justice problems, veganism is going to be a necessary step." - Pattrice Jones
Episode 6 of Series 9: Unveiling Vegan Culture Transcript
Discussing the realities of racism, sexism, and speciesism, we explore how these issues are not standalone problems but are intricately linked. Vine Sanctuary, a beacon of hope and healing, exemplifies the power of community alliances — a sanctuary not just for animals but for humans too, particularly those from marginalized LGBTQ and BIPOC communities.
This episode isn't just about animal activism; it's an exploration of deep-seated ideologies and the political weight of our personal choices.
Guest: Pattrice Jones is a cofounder of VINE Sanctuary, an LGBTQ-led refuge for farmed animals, as well as an internationally recognized ecofeminist scholar and activist. Her new book, Bird's-Eye Views: Queer Queries About Activism, Animals, and Identity, collects essays by Pattrice jones on numerous topics relevant to human-animal relations.
Book Recommendation: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl
Other Links: The Oxen at the Intersection by Pattrice Jones
Episodes Like This:
E16: Antiracism in Animal Advocacy Part 1
E22: Ecofeminism and Entangled Empathy
E28: Animal Care Deserts, Accessibility and Love…
Show Credits Thank you also to John Lasala for his beautiful music and audio engineering on Series 11!
Read the Blog! (Guest profiles, book recommendations, trailers and more!)
What to start your own podcast in he Animal Advocacy or Animal Welfare Space? Check out my Podcast Mentoring Services!
We think that if you are interested in making the world better for animals, doing something about climate change, solving any social justice problems, veganism is going to be a necessary step.
Speaker 2:This is the Deal with Animals. I'm Marika Bell, anthrozoologist, cptt, dog trainer and an animal myself. This is a podcast about the connection and interaction between humans and other animals. Today, we are joined by Patrice Jones, a co-founder of Vine Sanctuary, an LGBTQ-led refuge for farmed animals. She's also an internationally recognized ecofeminist scholar and activist. I can't tell you how pleased I am that Patrice has come on to share her story and teaching with us. I learned so much from this conversation and, honestly, I had one of the best times I've ever had during an interview. I came to this discussion with the idea that we were going to talk about how animal sanctuaries can be places of activism, and this conversation really became so much more. We discuss understanding the intersections of social justice, including racism, sexism, homophobia and speciesism, the role of veganism in social justice and the importance of activism in a vegan lifestyle, and also how to step into your own power and make sure that you're an ally to those experiencing injustice, whether that person is part of the LGBTQ community, the BIPOC community or the non-human animal community. Patrice is just a wonderful person and I really hope you enjoy being part of this conversation. If there's any aspect of this that you would like to comment on. Please send me a message on Facebook or Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Thank you for joining me as we ask the question what's the deal with animals?
Speaker 1:I'm Patrice Jones and I am a co-founder of Vine Sanctuary, which is an LGBTQ-led refuge for farmed animals that also works for social and environmental justice.
Speaker 2:And what was the importance to you to found a farm animal sanctuary? Was there one particular animal that got it going or was it the idea that you then build it and they will come sort of situation?
Speaker 1:Well, Vine is currently one of the oldest and largest farmed animal sanctuaries in the United States, having been in existence since 2000 and with always upwards of 500 animals in residence at any given time. We do consider ourselves a multi-species community that is co-constructed by non-human community members and human community members alike. It all started when co-founder Miriam Jones and I accidentally moved to the part of the United States where factory farming of chickens was invented and perfected. That's the Delmarva Peninsula Delmarva, delaware, maryland, virginia a small peninsula on which the poultry industry kills and cuts up more than a million birds every day. But we had not been there very long. In fact, we were on the way to start our bank account in our new home when we drove past a chicken who had fallen or jumped from a truck headed for the slaughter plant. It was around this time of year in Maryland, so there was some snow on the ground. We drove past the bird and first we cheered yay for you, you got away. But then we each, without saying anything to each other, had the same realization, which was that in the snow overnight this bird would probably die. So I stopped the truck. We looked at each other. I made a U-turn with this sort of half excited, half nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach that my life was about to profoundly change. And we'll be here all day if I describe to you the hilarity that ensued. As Miriam, born in Pittsburgh and grown up in Pittsburgh, and I, born and raised in Baltimore City, this bird brought the bird home, made a few calls, discovered there was no place for this bird and decided to create a little refuge for her in the garage.
Speaker 2:Lovely.
Speaker 1:She turned out to be a he which launched our now decades long advocacy for roosters in particular, who are stereotyped in ways that both reflect and promulgate gender stereotypes, as well as our eventual creation of a protocol for the rehabilitation of roosters used in cock fighting who, prior to our intervention, were presumed to be incorrigibly aggressive, so much so that, if seized from bithar and used from cock fighting range, they would be inevitably euthanized.
Speaker 2:So can I ask were you, was this ever on your radar before this chicken?
Speaker 1:This was back in the days before the internet or when the internet was still quite new, and so if you gave money to a nonprofit organization, you didn't get email bulletins, you got actual newsletters in your mailbox, because Miriam was in the habit of giving away $10 or $20 a month to a different organization each month.
Speaker 2:The piazz of mail.
Speaker 1:The piazz of mail from every organization describing every horror you can imagine, and so our praxis was that, because images tend to get stuck in my head Miriam would read the newsletters and just tell me the things that I needed to know, and she would only show me the photos if I absolutely needed to see them in order to be able to comprehend the scope of the suffering. So, for example, I remember her showing me a photo of an egg factory, and so, at the time that we found the chicken, we were in the process of shifting from vegetarian to the inn, and we did know that animal that farmed animal. Sanctuaries existed, because we donated to some of them, and Miriam will say that she definitely had in the back of her mind the idea that someday a sanctuary would be a lovely thing. That was not on my mind. My presumption was that we would continue to both be primarily focused on social justice, although, at the same time as all of this was happening, my own academic work had led me to realize that I could not understand the things that I wanted to understand about racism and other social injustices without delving into the foundational ideologies of speciesism.
Speaker 2:All right, so that's a great segue. Let's talk more about that, because I don't think people a lot of the time have really thought about there being any kind of connection between this idea that humans are better than animals and then this other idea of some humans being better than other humans for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because it's really quite common among people who work for social justice to understand that you can't solve sexism without attending to racism as well, and vice versa, to understand that the habits of belief and behavior that underpin one form of discrimination or oppression or exploitation tend to be reiterated in other forms of discrimination or oppression, and that the different forms distinct tend to bolster and echo one another, and that therefore some of the most productive activist work can be done at the intersections where the work that you're doing can simultaneously make a dent in more than one form of harm. And it's also really common among leftists to understand that everything is political. In fact, feminists since the 1970s have said the personal is political.
Speaker 2:Oh, what does that mean?
Speaker 1:The slogan arose in the course of struggles against rape and domestic violence, both of which were portrayed as were commonly understood to be personal problems, reflective of personal disputes rather than expressions of systematic bias. Right, and so the widespread battery of wives by husbands. The fact that, at the time that I was a teen, a teen rape in marriage was not a crime. And so the feminists of the I don't remember whether it was late 60s or early 70s who were working on these problems, coined the slogan the personal as political, as part of consciousness raising among women who themselves thought about the abuse that they had endured at the hands of male partners or family members as personal problems. Right, rather than one example of a pattern of systemic oppression that harms women as a group.
Speaker 2:That's so interesting because I actually had a friend of mine come over and say specifically even now that there was this sort of leftist approach to solving problems and that all problems were systemic, and then this more right-wing approach that all problems were personal and individual issues that needed to be solved on a personal, individual level. And that was such a new idea to me, like I had thought that the idea of systemic issues was pretty self-explanatory and made a lot of sense, and for him to think the complete opposite was kind of mind-blowing to me. And this is somebody who I respect, who I like, who we've gotten along and we have very different political views, I think on different sides of that spectrum, and the fact that that was an idea that was prevalent among his friends was such a surprise to me and it was one I hadn't heard before. And the fact that you're now bringing it up as something that was an issue back in the late 60s, wow, so we haven't really come that far.
Speaker 1:Yes, there's a persistent threat across problems wherein the more conservative or reactionary approach is to focus on the individual rather than to focus on systems and patterns. But you were asking me about why animals are left out of the picture, so let me go back to what I was saying before I took a detour to explain the personal as political, and what I was saying at that point is that we'll say the personal is political, oh, except when it comes to what you eat, oh. But then wait a minute, that's political too, because we're going to boycott this and we're going to boycott that and we're. And that might include boycotting grapes in support of farm workers, or boycotting Coca-Cola for any of a thousand different reasons. And so it's not food that's outside the pale of thinking about its animals. And when I look back on myself during all of the years that I was a vegetarian, not a vegan social justice activist and did think of my vegetarianism as a personal choice, it was because I had, at the age of 15, decided that it would be morally inconsistent for me to eat animals when I could in fact be healthy without, and in my teenage reasoning that had taken the form of a very basic I don't need to a cow to nourish myself. And therefore that killing is not a killing in self-defense but a killing for pleasure, and I don't think that killing for pleasure is a valid thing to do. And I'm out there. Then I'm against the Vietnam War because I don't think that violence is the way to solve problems. How could I be eaten hamburgers? So it clearly was for me a moral choice, and yet I too excluded animals when talking about the interconnectedness among the various forms of oppression that human beings visit on one another. And I think the basic answer for why is this left out is the ideology of human supremacy. Human supremacy makes it hard to see human supremacy as a problem. If, in fact, you believe yourself to be inherently more worthy of moral concern because you are a member of a particular species and you sincerely believe that all other members of your species are, by simple virtue of their membership in that species, superior, then of course it's going to seem silly and beside the point to give equal consideration to the concerns, experiences, rights, whatever you might want to say, of members of other species. So that's just something that we have to tackle in the course of doing the work.
Speaker 2:Do you think that if we were raised culturally to not believe in human supremacy, then we would be more willing to say you know the whole the trolley thing, save five dogs or one human, we save the five dogs.
Speaker 1:Oh, I would hope that we wouldn't be thinking about trolley problems or other manufactured dilemmas, but we'd take the more eco-feminist position of saying what is the context for this? Why is there a trolley when we don't have trolleys anymore? Or if it's the lifeboat, well, which of them can swim? I would hope that we would be thinking a lot more complexly than these kinds of utilitarian gotcha questions.
Speaker 2:I love that. I asked that question now because I love your answer. That's amazing and such a great example of. I was trying to explain to somebody eco-feminism the other day. It was really hard for me not being a scholar in that area, to really formulate what I was trying to say. I think that's this example of it is really just fantastic, because people do bring up the things like the trolley question or the sinking boat question all the time as that example, but using it to when are the rest of the people who are on the boat.
Speaker 1:How did we get in a boat If it's your brother or the dog? Can your brother swim? Did your brother abuse you when you're both children? I mean, there are so many questions. How far from shore are you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great. Okay, so let's give a bit of a shout out to your new collection of essays as well. Yes, so tell us a little bit about your writing and we know now about how you got into this. But where has that progressed for you and in your work? Okay?
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for that. I persistently forget to promote things that I'm supposed to promote, so I really appreciate this prompt. The new Vine Press, which is the publishing arm of Vine Sanctuary, has just published a collection of my essays that is called Birds Eye Views Queer Queries about Activism, animals and Identity. Now, this book collects 33 essays written over the past 30 years, so include some essays written from before we started the sanctuary. My own writing for publication began in the early 90s, when I was an AIDS activist, and has included stints as a columnist for newspapers or magazines and then starting to contribute chapters to edited volumes. I also have two other books. One's called Aftershock, the other is called the Oxen at the Intersection, which is particularly of note to anyone who's interested in the intersections, because what I do in the Oxen at the intersection is I look at a failed attempt by Vine Sanctuary to save two cows. This effort was in the midst of a controversy that went viral at the time and, despite the best efforts of literally thousands of animal advocates, we were not able to save these two cows. This book tells that story and then looks in turn at how factors like racism, sexism, ableism and the like played a role in that situation, making it more difficult to rescue those cows, and my aim in doing that was to give us all a very concrete example of why it's important for us to pay attention to these intersections. In so doing, I modeled myself after the person who's thinking has most influenced my own, angela Davis, and I recall seeing her speak in the 1990s several times. I was blessed with that opportunity, and I noticed the degree to which she used stories, real life examples, and would tell us the real life example and then go back and show us how race and gender were interacting. Racism and sexism were interacting with each other to co-produce the problem or make it more difficult to solve the problem. And so this is the tact that I took with that book the Oxen at the intersection. But the new book, birds Eye Views, includes oh my gosh, the topics are so disparate. So anarchism, ecofeminism, surrealism, direct action is a running theme. Another running theme and why it's called Birds Eye Views is that a number of the essays flow from the practice that I have undertaken in writing since founding the sanctuary so for two decades now of imagining myself into the viewpoint of animals at the sanctuary and imagining what they would think about the topic at hand. So, for example, one chapter flows from my efforts to think about what cows would think about capitalism and what pigeons, who have witnessed human behavior in its many forms, what they could tell us about capitalism. This is all rooted not only in my belief that part of dismantling speciesism is learning from not just about, but from other animals, and as well as my understanding of another important concept in feminism, which is standpoint theory. Standpoint theory tells us that what you can see depends on where you stand, and that, therefore, it's important to consult a variety of standpoints when trying to understand a problem, and that folks with standpoints that are outside of the center often have, or able to see things that people who are right at the center aren't able to see about themselves or their circumstances. All the proceeds for the book go to the sanctuary, not me, nicole Cronin.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Thank you for sharing those. How important do you think activism is to the vegan lifestyle? Should all vegans also be activists? Are they already activists because they're vegan, or are there more steps that they should be taking? And I mean should is one of those words.
Speaker 1:Well, first, I should tell you that the vine in vine sanctuary stands for veganism is the next evolution, but it also stands for veganism is not enough. So why would we say that veganism is the next evolution? Well, we think that if you are interested in making the world better for animals, doing something about climate change, solving any social justice problems, veganism is going to be a necessary step. But why do we say that veganism is not enough? Well, in the same way that if a man is going to call himself a feminist, it's not enough for me that he just refrains from assaulting women. I expect him to do a little bit more to undermine the patriarchy. I think it's great as a queer person, I think it's great when straights refrain from committing hate crimes against us, but if they want to be our allies, they got to do a little bit more than that. So veganism is a baseline. Veganism is refraining from perpetrating a particular kind of harm, insofar as you are able. We also take the stance that nobody is vegan, that veganism is a process and that we're always in the process of going vegan by reducing the degree to which we participate in harm to members of other species. Right, because if you're in the United States and you're paying taxes. I am sorry to inform you that the government funds military animal testing and all sorts of other animal testing. So unless you're a tax evader, you're not completely vegan if you're paying your payroll tax.
Speaker 2:Well, I was thinking. Stuff as simple too as riding on a road. Yeah, riding on a road, or the clothing industry. That's one of our earlier episodes. We talk about fashion but we didn't really get into much about are they actually vegan if they're 100% cotton, if pesticides were used in making that cotton? There's so many steps and, of course, as you're saying, it's a process. Right, we can't just be vegan. It's a lifestyle choice to continue to make that choice regularly and to try to move that direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think that taking that stance toward it saves you from becoming hubristic or to self-congratulatory. And I struggle a bit, because human animals are deeply motivated by social factors and emotion, including the wish to be seen as virtuous or the wish to feel proud of yourself, and I think it's probably unreasonable to think that we could promote veganism without encouraging people to feel proud about making that choice. But when humans start to feel proud of themselves, it's always a problem. So we try to temper that with the recognition that ain't none of us completely vegan, even those of us who have been vegan for 40 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's such a great point. It's one of the main complaints I think non-vegans have about vegans, isn't? It is the self-righteousness that sometimes comes across, and it's hard not to feel that way when you feel like you're making let's say, quote better choices than somebody else and trying to encourage them, and they seem to not want to do that. It's hard not to feel better than someone, and that's something we all have to fight against, I think, all the time, because it really is going to actually put people off.
Speaker 1:Look, you're right, and I think that whoever you are, whatever you're doing in your life, I can assure you there are activists in some movement or another who are really wishing you would make some different choices, and if you can be mindful of that, you know some of the things you're doing wrong. You don't even know Right. Yeah, and I guess for me, I've always been allergic to self-righteousness. In general, it makes me itch, and in my earlier, in my decades of social justice work, I was part of so many coalitions that brought together people from different movement, people who were doing really, really righteous work in one realm and people were doing really, really righteous work in another realm, and who figured out how to work together, even though these people wished those people were thinking differently about this and these people wished those people would stop using this particular word. And so I think that the more that we adopt a stance of radical modesty now, for me it's easier, because of living at the sanctuary, where there are opportunities to become less hubristic every day, because the other piece of this is that just because you've decided to go vegan doesn't mean that your internalized human supremacy has disappeared. You're still going to be likely to treat animals as objects or presume that humans know better or make any number of presumptions, unless you're really struggling on purpose to rid yourself of those ways of thinking Me. At the sanctuary I've had docs talk, smack about me and cows show me how stupid I was being, and so that makes it a little bit easier to be less self-inflated.
Speaker 2:Animals have a way of putting you in your place. I have had those experiences myself.
Speaker 1:Is it? Yeah, If you allow it to happen. So good on you for letting it happen.
Speaker 2:Well, sometimes you don't have a choice. It's true, you might put yourself in better positions perhaps, but yeah, sometimes they just have a way of letting you know in front of lots of people. So radical modesty is one thing I want to just talk a little bit more about if you have a little more time, because, just on a tangent, I think sometimes, again, as a feminist, it's hard to want to feel modest because it feels like one of those things that we're told we need to be as women.
Speaker 1:Very good, very good. That's a very good point there.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so that's one I've regularly struggled with, because men tend to get so much by not being modest. And we're told again, as feminists, talk about what you can do so that you can get ahead, so that people can see you, and those two things just seem to fight a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really, really, really good point. That's a really good point, and I'm wondering now if I should use a different word than modesty, even because I'm not, because that is so gendered to a degree and because of this problem that you've talked about, because I'm really yeah, I'm really thinking about human supremacy and becoming more modest in that. But, my goodness, among the humans you're right the blatherers and the self-inflated boasters have a way of taking up all the airspace, though I do think that there's a way. I think it's tricky, but I do think that there's a way to be. I feel like we need a thesaurus yeah what I'm trying to talk about here is there's a way to be fully present, fully yourself, fully in your power and in your knowledge and in your expertise and in your talents, without boasting about them.
Speaker 2:And I think we've all met people like that too.
Speaker 1:There's a way in which you aggregate more social power that way than by empty boasting. So I think modesty might be the wrong word, because what I really is is anti whatever the opposite of boasting is. That's an interesting. I'm gonna have to think about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same.
Speaker 1:But what I'm talking about is being I don't need to use myself as an example, but I am thinking about myself. Like when I'm a leading a meeting or being part of a meeting and a man is taking up too much space, I don't hesitate to talk over him or to just seize the floor myself to invite some women to speak, and it's not in a puffed up boastful way, it's in a just, firm, grounded, power way. But I don't really have a word for that.
Speaker 2:Well, I like how you said present in your own power. I think that gave me an idea for the feeling that you bring to something like a meeting with a lot of people and I've seen that happen in meetings too, where someone moves into a space to create space for someone else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that can be the best way to do it. For me it looked quite apart from the animal movement. When I stumbled upon this was when I was in graduate school and along my cohort there were mostly women but a couple of men, and we had this professor who only knew the men's names and my name and only called on the men and me and it took me like a while to realize that, just whether it was by virtue of my lesbianism or my androgyny, he was coding me as male and giving me the male privilege. And once I realized that that was what he was doing, I started seizing that to be, so that he'd be like well, patrice, what do you think? And I'd be like I'm not sure, but I wanna know what Ruth thinks. Or, oh, I think that Katie has a question and it worked so beautifully, and that's an example. For example, when I was saying before that if a man is a feminist, that's the kind of thing I want him to be doing, I want him to notice in the meeting that, oh, wait a minute. Many, many, many more minutes have been taken up by men speaking and there are women who haven't said anything. So now you say Ruth looks like she has an idea. I wanna hear what it is.
Speaker 2:So you think then, bringing it full circle, what a vegan should be doing to be more than baseline is making space for animals to be heard, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yes, that is beautiful, because there is a huge problem within the vegan and animal rights movements where unexamined human supremacy leads humans to think of themselves as the leaders of the animal rights movement, when in fact, the rightful leaders of the animal rights movement are animals themselves. We are, at best, allah, and the question is how can we be good allies? When we are thinking about strategies, we do need to ask ourselves what would the cows think? What would the pigeons think? What would the chickens think? Is there anybody I know who might know enough about pigeons to tell me what the pigeons might think? If I'm thinking about chimps, what does Jane Goodall say? Because she actually knows chimps and probably could tell us what they would like us to do. So, yes, absolutely, it's very hard because you want to feel like a hero. It's hard for us at the sanctuary because people are always trying to make us into heroes, telling us what heroes we are, but we don't want to be heroes. Animals aren't damsels in distress. Animals are agents who are everyday fighting for their own self-determination and freedom, and our job is to make space for them to be heard and by the larger world, and then, in our own spaces, find ways to bring their voices in, even if it's only in our own imaginations, so that the things we decide to do on their behalf really do in some way reflect what we sincerely believe they would like us to do. I'm so glad you said that, because that's one of my, one of the things that like as you can just tell by the way I jumped up that most excites me, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to say it here.
Speaker 2:No, I'm glad that we've had this whole conversation. It's been really, really eye-opening for me and just probably one of the most fun conversations I've had in a while. I've really enjoyed it. Okay, so for our last three questions, I would love to know if there was a book that you could gift to all of the listeners and we've talked about your books, so this is a book that maybe you've read, that was perhaps life-changing for you, that you would like to gift to all of the listeners if you could.
Speaker 1:I want to say first I'm going to say one book that maybe fits that, but I do. I feel obliged to say that Vine Sanctuary considers Lori Groin's book Ethics and Animals to be like the book that people who are new to thinking about animals and ethics should read. So I need to shout out that one. Absolutely For me personally. I read so much so it's really mean to make me just choose it.
Speaker 2:I know it is so mean. Sometimes people just can't control it and they give me more than one, which is fine.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to say Biological Exuberism by Bruce Bajamil. Now, this might seem to be about a narrow topic. It's a book. Stop of a book, I'm sorry, not Biological Exuberism, biological Exuberance by Bruce Bajamil. This book is ostensibly about, and is about, same-sex relations among non-human animals and is beautifully useful In and of itself for that purpose. However, it is also so beautifully written that you are brought into the Affinital and sensory worlds of so many different animals and so many different places that you really can begin to grasp that JBS Haldein, the biologist who famously said the universe is clearer, is not just clearer than we Suppose, but clearer than we can suppose, was right, and it illuminates Some of one of the intersections that we've talked about a lot at Bind Sanctuary, which is the intersection between homophobia and speciesism and the very promising intersections between animal liberation and queer liberation, by showing the degree to which presumptions of heteronormativity have suppressed scientific Free for for a long time, until quite recently, suppressed the truth about same-sex relations among non-human animals. And this, of course, makes it much easier, and not only makes it seem true when the homophobes shout it's not natural, but also makes it easier to exploit animals because if, as the nature programs seem to want us to believe Nate animals are simply Recreate using robots and are just following instincts To do so. Well then that makes it a lot easier to lock them up in the foie gras factories or vivisection labs. But if you understand, for example, that most ducks are bisexual, then you know that they're getting it on for fun. And if you know that they can, that that two male ducks might pair bond for life, well then you know they're spending time together due to something other, then some biological Imperative to reproduce, some kind of affection, some kind of attachment, and and so then you have to admit that these people have feelings. And if you admit that they have feelings, then it becomes a lot harder to do the harmful things. Sadly, not impossible, but hard.
Speaker 2:I did not know this about ducks.
Speaker 1:So that's, that's the book, all right.
Speaker 2:I will include that in the show notes and in the blog and it really explains the polyamorous Duck family. I've gotten my backpump.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, oh my goodness. So I mean a lot of our work, a lot of. If you, if you read my book Birds I've used, then you'll meet Jean Paul and Jean cloud, to pair bonded ducks who are rescued from a foie gras factory and whose Relationship with each other provoked me into Trains of thought that I've persisted for decades now. And I do mention that while they were a pair bonded and and spent time together every day and slept together every night, they absolutely were not Madagabus Cuz ducks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ducks ducks. All right, so would you share Maybe? I mean you shared with us the story about the chicken, which was fantastic. Was there a earliest memory of your connection with animals? What was the first animal you remember really connecting with?
Speaker 1:Well, my earliest memory involves Is is actually so early that it's pre-verbal and my father was in the Navy when I was born my teenager in the Navy and we lived on the Naval base in Newfoundland for a while and the home that we lived in was the Informal dog shelter of the Naval base. Basically, this was if people got shifted off of the base, they would drop off the any dogs they had adopted there, and then when new people came to the base, they would they would. So there was always a gang of dogs and I have a really clear, distinct, pre-verbal memory of being a toddler surrounded by and feeling immensely safe in the presence of Cacophony of dogs, and I was an abused child, so that feeling of safeness was with precious yeah, it's a funny how people the image of a toddler being surrounded by dogs is not one that people might feel super comfortable with, and yet I Know what you mean by that.
Speaker 2:There was a dog I had that I would wrestle with when I was young, and he was as big as I was, if not bigger, and I think it it concerned my mom a little, but my relationship with him was such that I knew him so well and and and he knew that we were playing it was so obviously play that we weren't gonna hurt each other and and it was something that it was a relationship that I had that I think was probably one of my most connected. So, patrice, what is the deal with animals?
Speaker 1:well, there's a speaking of books. There's a fascinating book by Stefan man Cusso called the nation of plans, where he imagines that the nation of plants takes itself to the United Nations to school humans on what we need to do to be better neighbors, co-inhabitants to the plants upon whom our very existence depends. And that makes me hear the the question what is the deal with animals? As a Question to the plants, what is that? Or a question that the plants might be asking each other, what is the deal with animals? And because plants, truly, are the rational beings that humans imagine themselves to be. Unlike animals, plants don't have emotions that can skew assessments or prompt ill-considered Motions, and and make much better decisions as a result. And you notice that then, thinking about this this way just glomps us humans, together with the other animals about whom the plants are Wondering, and I think that's apt mm-hmm because we're just one kind of animal and a particular kind of animal with particular foibles, that if we can set aside our human supremacy a bit, we might be able to understand better and try to solve problems within an awareness of our own animal limitations. So the question what is the deal with animals? Well, animals have feelings and in any effort to understand In the animals, including human animals, has got to take not just cognition but also emotion and environment, material environment and, in the case of social animals, social environment into account. And and we're all absolutely dependent on algae and trees.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for sharing all of your thoughts today and your story, and I really appreciate your time. It's just been absolutely fabulous for me to get a chance to talk with you.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it very much. I've enjoyed the conversation too, and and I appreciate all of the work that you do.
Speaker 2:That was Patrice Jones, co-founder of Vine Animal Sanctuary. Her new book, birds Eye Views Queer queries about activism, animals and identity is a collection of essays by Patrice Jones on Numerous topics relevant to human animal relations. You can find it at Vine Sanctuary, comm or wherever you buy books. Thank you for joining me as we try to answer the question. What's the deal with animals? I'm your host, marika Bell. The theme music for the deal with animals was composed by Kai Strascoff. You can see links to the guest book recommendations, as well as their websites and affiliated organizations in the show notes and at the deal with animals. This podcast was produced on both historical tribal land of the Snoqualmie and Quinalt Indian Nations. For more information, go to the Snoqualmie tribes ancestral lands movement. What do you think is the deal with animals? The deal with animals is part of the Irore animal podcast network.