Feminism, Animals and Science: The Naming of the Shrew

by Lynda Birke

What we think other animals are matters to how we see how similar are they, or how different? Do humans belong to culture, and animals (or women?) to nature? For feminists, that matters particularly, for it has so often been animal names that have been used to derogate women. This book explores these boundaries focusing particularly on feminist analyses of science; science not only uses animals, but also names and defines them. Beginning with some ways in which 'animals' are defined, and with feminist concerns about non-humans as fellow sufferers, the book goes on to look at how ideas about animals are constructed in different areas of biological science and how these intersect with feminist critiques of modern science.
The book then addresses the human/animal opposition implicit in much feminist theorizing, arguing that the opposition helps to maintain the essentialism that feminists have so often criticized. The final chapter brings us back from ideas of what 'the animal' is, to ask how these questions might relate to environmental politics, including ecofeminism and animal rights.

167 pages, Hardcover

About the author

LYNDA BIRKE is a feminist biologist who has written extensively on the connections between feminism and science. She is the co-founder of two feminist groups and author of several bookps including Women, Feminism and Biology: The Feminist Challenge; Feminism, Animals and Science: The Naming of the Shrew; Rethinking Biology: Respect for Life and the Creation of Knowledge (co-edited with Ruth Hubbard);and, Common Science? Women, Science and Knowledge (with Jean Barr).

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Way more interesting than I thought it was going to be, and I was impressed with Birke's discussion of gender essentialism, as well as the book's ending chapter (in which Birke discussed people with disabilities and the history of depicting PWDs as "monsters" or as more animal-like than people who are able-bodied).