Musing about Oppression
Just read the announcement of my home congregation's Blessing of the Animals ceremony. Some years this has been fun and deeply spiritual, acknowledging our connections to the Web of All Life and recognizing the amazing patience of the animals who make their homes with us, go to the vet because we tell them to, put up with so much nonsense with wonderful grace. Some years it has been a bit less, perhaps unconsciously highlighting the tendency of 'humanists' to assume humans are 'more' than animals ... and that animals are 'less'.
This year, though, even the announcement seems to have an unconscious oppression about it: "Dogs must be on leashes and cats in cages."
Excuse me.
(pause for interior explosive reactivity. breathe. okay, now we can talk about this).
MinervaCat, my owner in residence, has never been carried in a cage. She has only rarely been asked even to stay in a cage, and never put into a cage by force (unless the vet did it, I suppose, during her one hospitalization). So, at least not ever forced into a cage by me.
She's not a fan of leashes, but she'll wear one if I ask politely. She likes it best if I'm already wearing a harness myself -- since that helps everyone around us understand that both of us are bound, not just one.
Decoding my reactivity, I notice that part of what I react to is the artificial distinction based on human habit. Of the two species, the dogs I've known are much more likely to be intrusively in the space of another being (animal or human) than the cats. Cats are quieter, generally. It's true that more dogs come when called than cats, but I'm not sure this is a species difference. Sometimes it looks like a training difference to me.
Part of what I'm reacting to is the echo of the different levels of privilege accorded to males and females in human society at present ... and the echo of all the people who have assumed my female dogs were "he" until they looked, or my male cats "she". Apparently this is based on vocal register, but still ...
And then, deeper, the knowledge that in a different time and place it was seen as inappropriate to bring one's slave-humans to town without them being chained. ... to bring one's womenfolk to town without a male relative to guide and manage (protect) them ...
And at the end of the rant is the knowledge that most of what I hear today against "gay marriage" is identical to what we heard in the 1950s and 1960s against "interracial marriage" -- downfall of civilization, affront to the 'normal' marriages, damage to the community of married families, danger to the blood or bloodlines... which echoes what I was told about not being allowed to take shop classes in high school -- "it'll distract the boys, your hair would be a hazard, you'd get dirty, you won't be strong enough ..."
I end up wanting to shout from the housetops, but I dunno which sentence to shout first. And am I telling or asking? And who, exactly, am I yelling at, anyway? Them? You? Us?
What makes you suppose that your skin color or genitals or sexual expression or species puts you in charge of everyone else?
What gives you the right to make rules for me?
By what stupidity have you learned to value machine communication over heart-to-heart communion, recorded music over live, consensus reality over the evidence of your own awareness, humans over animals, gasohol over food, ... ????
As you see, a rant in the making.
Every time I find myself in a group working on anti-oppression, I find out more about the commonalities among kinds of oppression. Racism and sexism have similar roots and similar logic. Nationalism and religious conflict have similar roots and similar fears. We teach violence by using violence to punish violence, and then we wonder why no one seems to know how to create longlasting peace.
A rant.
(sigh)
...