Animals and women: feminist theoretical explorations

Why should feminists be concerned about the treatment of animals?Why should there be a feminist perspective on the status of animals?This collection of articles begins to answer these questions.It could be argued that theorizing about animals is inevitable for feminism.Historically, the ideological justification for women's alleged inferiority has been made by appropriating them to animals: from Aristotle on, women's bodies have been seen to intrude upon their rationality.Since rationality has been construed by most Western theorists as the defining requirement for membership in the moral community, women-along with nonwhite men and animalswere long excluded.Until the twentieth century this "animality" precluded women's being granted the rights of public citizenship.At least three responses to this historical alignment of women and animals have appeared in feminist theory.The first approach is perhaps the most familiar.It argues that women are not like animals, but are distinctly human.In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir