Tired Ethics) founded in 1973.There are several stories about why the name COYOTE was chosen but the most popular one is that there was a parallel to be drawn between how coyotes are used as “scapegoats” by ranchers and others — and nowadays even in cities like Toronto and Vancouver — for everything that’s going wrong and also how prostitutes are blamed for everything that’s going wrong in our neighborhoods. So a year ago I just felt this coyote presence crawling into my life and I decided that I had to explore that metaphor more profoundly. I think there is a link between how coyotes are treated and how prostitutes are treated and perceived. But I have an issue when people appropriate another group’s oppression to make a statement about their own if they’re not going to also speak about that other group’s oppression.46
Yapping Out Loud explores examples of violence against sex workers through seven monologues, two of them featuring linguistic and visual images of wild canines:
Coyotes are very powerful animals, beautiful animals. And they can also be intimidating animals. You cannot help but feel something when you’re in the presence of a coyote either on video or in real life. Just like prostitutes also. When people are in our presence, we can come across as powerful people. So I wanted to have this very beautiful and strong and grounded coyote presence.47
Ross’s coyote metaphor does not insist on parity or even similarity between the persecution of coyotes and sex workers. Her description of feeling “this coyote presence crawling into my life” is an example of what the late Gloria Anzaldúa, in her short essay “Metaphors in the Tradition of the Shaman,” called the “working of […] the imagination act(ing) upon the body.”48 For Anzaldúa, images and words communicate with the body’s organs, reshaping them in the process. The way our imaginations work, the kinds of metaphors we choose or have imposed upon us, can make us sick. This is especially true of racist and other oppressive metaphors (for example, comparing people of colour to animals). But metaphors can also heal and open the way for transformation. One task of the poet is to cure societies by purging dead, harmful metaphors and replacing them with new, healing ones:
Like the shaman, we [poets] transmit information from our consciousness to the physical body of another. […] If we’ve done our job well we may give others access to a language and images with which they can articulate/express pain, confusion, joy and other experiences thus far experienced only on an unarticulated emotional level.49
I detect in Ross’s story of the coyote entering her life echoes of Anzuldúa’s transformative poetry. And I learn from the words of queer artists such as Ross and Anzaldúa that animals can work their way into our imaginations and bodies, helping us to see the world in ways that may empower us to change it. As Ross insists, other creatures are always more than metaphors for human existence and dreams. Similarly to Baker’s call for animal representations that offer alternatives to the violent, anthropocentric images of animals that saturate Western society, Ross’s coyote metaphor reminds us that the use of animal symbolism need not be reductive and oppressive for human beings or animals. At different points in this book I consider how we might use animal imagery, as well our everyday encounters with animals, to learn more about the lives and experiences of other creatures, in the process thinking about how we might construct new, less oppressive relationships to them.
The history of the use of animal metaphors and comparisons between people and animals shows that these can sometimes be transformative. But they can also be dangerous, for people and animals alike. Making comparisons between different forms of oppression and violence can be a useful way of prompting people to examine more carefully the gaps in our thinking and compassion, to draw attention to our inconsistencies and our hypocrisies. But in order to do that effectively, comparisons need to be done in ways that recognise differences as much as similarities. This includes, crucially, the fact that comparisons of different kinds of past atrocities will have very different meanings for different people. If the aim of veganism is to encourage people to end the exploitation of all animals, including humans, we need to be careful and conscious about the kinds of comparisons we use, and how. And we need to be honest about whether certain metaphors and comparisons are likely to promote change, or whether they carry the risk of injuring others while keeping the hierarchical status quo firmly in place.
September 2017Alicante, Spain
Ideas that have been swimming around my mind for some time — less a school than an anarchic assembly of finned creatures — are starting to sway to the rhythm of my peculiar temporary office space. The location is a rather rustic sailboat, moored in a Mediterranean marina, bobbing up and down, rocking me and filling my ears with the assorted sounds of flapping sails, lapping water and, most insistent and persistent, the scrape of the hull against the wooden dock. Between rushes of rapid jotting on my laptop I become aware of the movement and soundtrack outside, amplified at times by flashes of heat from inside and outside my body.
This morning a different kind of bodily sensation disrupted and then coloured my thinking: during my dawn dip in the sea I was stung by a jellyfish. It was quick as lightening — brief confusion followed by the shock of realisation, then panic as I kicked the innocent offender away and swam quickly back to shore. The calf and knee of my left leg swelled rapidly under the hot red stripes left by the tentacles I had managed to tear away. After a do-it-yourself treatment — dosing the injured leg in vinegar, followed by a hot shower — the sting subdued to a dull ache as I continued to write. The body of this particular animal — whom I had glanced but briefly, a faint swirl of cloud dispersing underwater — stayed with me.
Later, walking to lunch under the scorching sun, I reflected on my irritation with this small beast of the sea. After all, it was I who had trespassed in her home. Though I had escaped with minor pain and discomfort, I didn’t know what had become of her. Do jellyfish have a sex? Do they live after they sting? A quick tour through Google taught me that most jellyfish are male or female and sting to defend themselves and catch their prey, so do not normally die after striking out. I seem to have come off lightly — no tentacles stuck in my flesh. Yet as the swelling died down I felt blessed to carry a light trace on my skin of this encounter with a real-life medusa.
Being prey and being predators
My brush with the jellyfish in the warm waters of the Mediterranean brought to mind a tale of a much more dramatic — and infinitely more dangerous — underwater encounter with a predator. In a brief narrative written in the mid 1990s, the late ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood recounts the story of her near-death experience with a saltwater crocodile during a solo canoe trip in Australia’s Kakadu National Park.1 Plumwood’s description of how she escaped — just — three consecutive crocodile death rolls is also an account of how, while she fought for her life, her sense of self was shattered. This is no heroic tale of human survival in the face of the unpredictable brutality of “nature,” no reaffirmation of what it means to be human in the face of adversity. Instead, Plumwood’s crocodile tale is a humble reflection on herself as prey. It is also the occasion for asking about how we as people categorise different species, deciding what counts as food and what does not — questions with important ethical and political implications for vegans, vegetarians and omnivores alike.
An experienced canoeist and bush traveller, Plumwood had ventured out alone into the lagoon on a wet day in search of an Aboriginal rock art site. As the rains got heavier she and her canoe were pulled out of the backwaters into the main river channel that the camp ranger had warned her to stay away from: ‘“The current’s too swift, and if you get into trouble, there are the crocodiles. Lots of them along the river!”’
