Are You Man Enough,Big and Bad Enough? Ecofeminism and Wolf Eradication in the USA

Abstract

There is much to be gained and little to be lost by understanding and articulating our thinking about who ‘we’ and ‘they’ are. In this regard, the usual pattern of labeling, judging, and acting nearly always leads to taxonomizing or classification of people or things—sometimes resulting in benefits for the classified ‘other’, sometimes just the opposite. In this paper, the representations of the wolf in the USA during the historical period of its near extinction at the hands of private citizens and government hunters are examined. From an ecofeminist position, it is argued that indulgence in the practices of representation in those particular forms exhibited during that historical period were not only devastating to the wolf and other animals but also the same practices that perpetuated racism and sadism in the treatment of other people who were purportedly below European-American males on the hierarchy of beings. The argument contained within this paper cautions us to beware of admonitions of ‘necessity’ that creep into our thinking about the way the world must be (that is, there is no way to coexist with ‘savagery’) and encourages the examination of both cultural and economic determination of human and nonhuman animal relations.