The question of whether two community members should be put to death had somehow slipped the town boundaries and mutated into a world-wide cause célèbre. In the end, one was killed and the other spared, but nobody could answer that all-important question: Where’s the body?
These events may have occurred more than a decade ago, but animal advocates continue to struggle with the same exhausting challenges: interpersonal communication breakdowns; impenetrable social conditioning; harmful, fiercely held traditions; power inequality; illogic; and even oversized egos.
On these hurdles and more, pattrice jones offers her post-defeat reflections, guided by explorations of human psychology, in The Oxen at the Intersection.
BILL AND LOU: “WORKERS,” “COMMUNITY MEMBERS,” AND “UNOFFICIAL MASCOTS”
Bill and Lou were two elderly oxen who endured forced labor, side by side, at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont, for about 10 years before Lou suffered an injury that would spark the far-reaching controversy. Although relatively minor, the injury prevented Lou from heavy labor. Used always in tandem, both Bill and Lou subsequently became valueless to GMC.
Having previously feigned appreciation and high regard for the animals as “workers,” “community members,” and “unofficial mascots,” Green Mountain College now intended to slaughter Bill and Lou and serve them as hamburgers in the school cafeteria. But their plan was interrupted when they naively boasted of the decision on Facebook.
The news spread rapidly, engaging Green Mountain College’s students, faculty, and administrators as well as nearby VINE Sanctuary’s cofounders, pattrice jones and Miriam Jones, who volunteered a safe space for Bill and Lou to retire. In a chapter titled, “Uh-Oh, Here Come the Heroes,” pattrice describes the many others who followed, including high-profile men like Psychology Today contributor Marc Bekoff, animal advocate Steven Wise, and historian James McWilliams.
“As male philosophers jousted with one another via high-flown guest blog posts, Bill and Lou themselves went missing, along with most of the women laboring to bring the oxen to a sanctuary where women would use their muscles to care for them.”
Countless arguments were made and solutions presented to spare the lives of Bill and Lou. And for each, Green Mountain College responded in defense of their desire to kill them. In the end, by mysterious means, Lou was “euthanized” and buried.
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE DIFFERENTLY TO SAVE LOU?
Using the concept of overdetermination, pattrice demonstrates that there was no one cause, and therefore no simple answer to this question.
I might be giving the entire book away, but I have to describe the central storyline, which I found fascinating: pattrice’s theoretical autopsy, performed through an analysis of interconnected and mutually reinforcing factors organized into three parts.
PART I: THE POWER OF PLACE, BOTH VERMONT AND THE WIDER UNITED STATES
“Places are conjunctions of time and space. To understand what happened in any particular place, then, we must understand both the abiding characteristics of the region and its zeitgeist—the spirit of the times—at the moment in question.”
Setting the stage, pattrice paints a vivid picture of Vermont’s history of colonialism and amnesia, from the erasure of the Abenaki people to the establishment of a state mythology that claims animal farming is “intrinsic to the character of the place and therefore inherently righteous.”
At the time of the controversy, Green Mountain College proudly defined itself by its spirit of the heavily romanticized “Green Mountain State” of Vermont, commitment to environmental sustainability, and support of the budding “locavore” movement. Loca-what??
pattrice describes proponents of this lingering fad with biting clarity: “Locavores, including former vegetarians and otherwise highly logical progressives, appear to feel not less bad but actively good about exploiting animals, as if there were something positively virtuous about eating the body parts and products of sentient creatures, so long as those creatures were incarcerated and killed nearby.”
“Exceptionalism, paranoia, and presumptions of innocence round out the list of Green Mountain College characteristics born in the USA.” So when outsiders opposed the school’s choice to slaughter Bill and Lou, GMC easily assumed the role of victim, confounded by what they deemed unwarranted attacks.
pattrice observed that “the debate about the fate of Bill and Lou had a life-or-death intensity on both sides. Of course, defenders of Bill and Lou knew that the oxen would die if they did not prevail. But defenders of slaughter sometimes seemed to feel that their own lives, or at least their identities, were at stake.”
PART II: DANGEROUS INTERSECTIONS, BETWEEN SPECIESISM AND SOCIAL INJUSTICE
pattrice opens this chapter with various analogies and examples to convey the meaning and importance of “intersectionality.” She encourages readers to approach problems by considering the complex conjunctions of social, economic, and environmental circumstances in which they exist. “Since most of us have been schooled to solve problems by dividing and conquering, it takes some practice to learn to see relationships, interactions, ecologies, and systems.”
pattrice describes five such collisions. I’ll touch on two. For her analyses on ritual sacrifice, environmental racism, and cap and trade, you’ll have to read the book.
ANIMAL HUSBANDRY = PATRIARCHY
When domination is hidden in plain sight… Included in Green Mountain College’s curriculum: Animal Husbandry, as opposed to modern euphemisms such as Animal Science.
“By becoming the ‘husbands’ of farmed animals, men like GMC’s farm manager arrogate to themselves the right to choose whether, when, and with whom the animals under their control will mate.”
For anyone who’s never considered how a steak or roasted chicken manifests, or that only cows who’ve just given birth can produce milk, farming animals involves control of every aspect of reproduction. “They—the ‘husbands’—and not the mothers decide what will happen to calves, lambs, chicks, and piglets.”
Beyond the long history of men treating animals, daughters, wives, and land as property, patriarchy permeates and impedes the animal liberation movement, and the struggle over Bill and Lou was no exception. Gender bias and male pride were two more layers in this overdetermined cold case. “[O]nce the men in power at GMC came to perceive calls for the oxen to go to sanctuary as challenges to their rightful authority it became more difficult to engineer an outcome in which everyone’s needs would be met.”
DISABILITY RITES (BEWARE OF ABLEISM)
Quick recap: The deadly dispute began with Lou stepping in a gopher hole, resulting in an injury similar to a sprained ankle. But denied adequate care and healing time, Lou’s injury became chronic. Since Bill and Lou’s forced labor was always a team effort, the pair could no longer earn their keep, and their status as community members was revoked. Green Mountain College’s proposed solution was to serve their flesh in the student cafeteria—because it would be the green thing to do.
“[T]he notion that beings lose the right to existence when they become too aged or infirm to be useful to others is troubling to those who believe that communities owe care to their elderly and disabled members, regardless of their ability to ‘earn’ that concern through productive labor.”
Unsurprisingly, the rationale didn’t sit well with some GMC supporters either, leading the college to change course. One of the alternative justifications they provided: “it would be kinder to kill them.” Euthanasia would be a compassionate fix for Lou’s limp, and “Bill was too attached to Lou to be able to live happily after his death.” In other words, life with a disability is not worth living, and mourners should be put out of their misery.
PART III: ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY, BECAUSE WE ARE ANIMALS AFTER ALL
“Unfortunately, much of the discourse about what to do with Bill and Lou proceeded as if the two oxen were the only animals in question.” And because we are social animals, we are biologically predisposed to respond to social signals in ways that prioritize acceptance and ensure our survival.
I’ll keep this section short. Not because I didn’t find it intriguing, but because this post has morphed into something wayyy longer than I had intended.
A range of human behaviors are examined here, such as “groupthink,” group polarization, obedience to authority, and conformity. While pattrice cautions that these phenomena should not be considered universal, they were relevant to the conflict at Green Mountain College—and happening all at once. The college’s insulated environment, presence of an authority figure (GMC’s farm manager) central to the conflict, encouraged adherence to community values, and homogeneity of students and faculty heightened bias and curbed dissent.
My favorite takeaway:
“A better ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of proponents of the killing might have led animal advocates to conceive of more effective means of persuasion—or to determine that persuasion was impossible and move more quickly and effectively to the option of direct action.”
REMEMBERING BILL AND LOU AND THE SILVER LINING THAT MAY SIGNAL SOCIETAL SHIFT
Rather than allowing Bill and Lou to retire peacefully by accepting VINE’s offer of sanctuary, Green Mountain College killed Lou and, as far as I can discern, maintained responsibility for Bill.
If you want to put faces to the names, as I did, here is one of the few accessible images I could find of Bill and Lou. The overwhelming scale of animal agriculture obscures the individuality of its victims. The Oxen at the Intersection gives us a chance to pause and consider the lives of two.
Less than seven years later, Green Mountain College shut down for good due to dwindling enrollment and insufficient income.
From the book’s back cover: pattrice jones is an ecofeminist writer, scholar, and activist who, along with Miriam Jones, cofounded VINE Sanctuary, an LGBTQ-run farmed animal sanctuary that operates within an understanding of the intersection of oppressions.
The Oxen at the Intersection is a quick read and valuable addition to your animal advocacy and social justice library. For a paperback copy, check out Bookshop.org. The book is available in digital format only through the publisher, Lantern Publishing & Media.
All quoted text in this summary is from The Oxen at the Intersection.
Featured image: pattrice jones, 2015; credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals
P.S. IMO, pattrice is totally fan-worthy. While working on this post, I had the privilege of attending one of her writing workshops. I was already completely enamoured of her, from reading this book and catching a recording of her keynote speech at an Animal & Vegan Advocacy conference. So getting to listen to her live and even ask questions (😱) put me over the moon.
It took me an hour plus to work up the courage to speak. I asked about time and place, and I asked her about The Oxen at the Intersection. She mentioned that there were things her present self would not have said or said differently, which I want to note as a reminder for any reader. Publishing a book takes vulnerability. It opens the author up to criticism and refutation. And so, assuming a book is written with unadulterated honesty, it still cannot be taken as a current and complete reflection of the author’s character or stance on an issue. A book is a moment, frozen in time. A tool. And hopefully a spark for our own imagination.