I'm not sure what to say. I haven't written about this in weeks and now I have a proposal due tomorrow at noon.

I just finished reading the chapter on "Ecofeminism and Eating Animals" in "Neither Man Nor Beast" by Carol J. Adams, in which she asserts her reasons why ecofeminist theory should more explicitly address the problem of animal suffering and propose vegetarianism/veganism as a crucial component of ecofeminism in practice.

I face the problem of exploring a field that is widely unexplored. Though academic and popular discussion of these issues is becoming more prevalent, the target of these discussions is, more often than not, the issue of "food" as a whole or "environmentalism" rather than "animals". The few authors that do focus explicitly on animals dominate this budding discourse. There are so many questions and problems that have not yet been addressed in regards to human relationships with other animals.

I am also encountering some difficulty addressing the issue of why I want to approach animal rights (or animal liberation? -- still haven't decided) through feminism or through correlating the two. While I see that in a lot of ways, animal rights is feminist theory extended to other species of animals, I don't see the reciprocal relationship between the two. Feminism does not inherently recognize this extension. I know plenty of feminists that are generally unconcerned with animal suffering. I do think that's problematic--but I think it's problematic for reasons that are outside of the scope of feminism. Or maybe my understanding of feminism is too narrow. Or my perception of the feminism others is too narrow?

Though, even if I don't think feminism must necessarily recognize animal rights, I do think that feminist discourses are important groundwork for animal rights discourses. And surely many feminists will recognize the many important intersections of these two areas of concern and come to the conclusion that animals, like women, are exploited in such a way so as to be consumed by men (and women as well, in the case of animals) and this exploitation is performed in such a way that bodily autonomy, particularily reproductive, is subjugated to the power of the consumer. This exploitation of the body is perpetuated by the social and cultural production of values that attributes more moral weight to the consuming body (man or human) and less to the exploited body (woman or non-human).

And it's moments like this that I recognize what a ridiculous theoretical mess I'm in. And in these moments I truly appreciate the fact that I am graduating in less than a month and a half.