Wild animal ethics: a gender-sensitive perspective

Abstract

This chapter examines the role of gender identity in shaping human attitudes toward nonhuman animals, in particular wild animals, that is, the way that gender influences human beliefs, desires and values about wild animals’ lives and shapes our value assessments about the natural world more generally. It starts by exposing anthropogenic harms suffered by animals living in the wild and the gender-based reasons such harms remain typically overlooked. It then proceeds by exposing the naturogenic harms that wild animals face on a systematic basis and explore the generalised indifference toward it as explained, at least in part, by a gendered appreciation of nature’s ways. It argues that such attitudes derive from a male-biased worldview which misconstrues individuals as mere elements in the large network of “wholes”, idealises natural processes and/or places a disproportionate normative value on autonomy. Finally, it suggests future directions for adopting more ethical, and less gendered, attitudes towards the suffering of wild animals.