A frustrating reality of women’s history in animal rights activism is that many of the greatest leaders of the movement were incredibly inconsistent in their ethical positioning. Francis Power Cobbe, for instance, was a committed meat eater, while Anna Kingsford was not in support of women’s suffrage. Not all women in the movement, for that matter, were especially fond of Nonhuman Animals beyond the particular species they advocated for.
Prominent avian advocate and naturalist Elizabeth Grinnell (1851 – 1935), for instance, was a leading female voice in the movement to protect wild spaces and free-living animals. She was feminist in her critique of violent masculinity she saw manifest in boys with air guns attacking birds, yet she was also vehemently opposed to outdoor cats who stalked and killed songbirds. Grinnell (and her son Joseph, who often co-authored with her) was not alone in this position. Bird conservation was one of the first Nonhuman Animal rights and environmental campaigns, and many advocates were critical of the damage done by cats (Grinnell and Grinnell 1899, Grinnell and Grinnell 1900).
What was perhaps more unique about Grinnell’s position, however, was her vitriolic attack on unmarried women who she believed were the source of the problem. These women irresponsibly enabled free-roaming cats, she charged, and this was a direct result of their failure to meet their more fundamental duty as women to marry. Women could not control their cats as they were not controlled themselves.
The Grinnells (1899), not surprisingly, took issue with popular women’s millinery that incorporated birds’ corpses and feathers. “If these ladies stopped to see what they were doing, and to think of how ridiculous they look, they would never wear these ornaments, just like savages” (142), they attested, reminding readers that “all this suffering is just to satisfy the cruel pride of women and girls” (144). Historian Diane Donald agrees, noting the irony of women’s claim to a more sophisticated and moral intelligence amidst the rationalistic, detached mindset that predominated in patriarchal Western society and fueled colonial conquest: “The refinement and domesticity of the Victorian lady supposedly represented the antithesis of rough business in the wilder reaches of the Empire; yet she was enveloped in its spoils” (2019: 250).
Ironically, Grinnell’s own concern for free-living birds was deeply conflicted, as evidenced in her co-authorship of Game Farming for Profit and Pleasure (Huntington et al. 1915) and her editorial work on her son’s account of a naturalist trip to Alaska (Grinnell 1901). As was typical of zoological studies of the era, the latter publication documented a veritable massacre of free-living animals killed for sport, science, or sustenance along his journey. This was not seen as contradictory in the least. The rampant bloodshed that the Grinnells documented for a public audience was presented as part of the thrill of adventure.
Despite its many complexities, many of which clearly failed both women and fellow animals, Grinnell’s work stands as an important political contribution from women in an era that otherwise barred women from participating in public affairs. In fact, nature conservation was one area of activism in which women, as “nature’s housekeepers,” could participate (Unger 2012). A number of women took action for birds, for instance, constituting one of the first women-led anti-speciesist campaigns. Catherine Victoria Hall, Etta Lemon, and several other women in Britain, by way of an example, launched the Fur, Fin and Feather Society in the late 19th century. Beginning as a social organization that met regularly in Croyden to raise awareness and funding for various free-living animal issues (Boase 2021), they would soon join forces with Emily Williamson to form the Society for the Protection of Birds.
The SPB bravely tackled the immensely profitable London feather trade that was decimating avian populations. While the society disrupted the normalcy of wearing birds and bird parts as fashion, the gender of these activists made collaboration with male-dominated ornithology societies difficult and elicited mockery from the media (Smith 2021). The patronage of Queen Victoria (lending the SPB its “Royal” status) would bolster the project and lead the way for legal protections for some species of birds.
As was the case in the United States, the United Kingdom also had difficulties marrying conservationist anti-speciesism with feminism. Tensions rose between the RSPB and the suffragettes (many of whom were also RSPB members), and the RSPB’s own founder Etta Lemon would become a leading member of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League. Ironically, she herself would become victim of sexism as she entered her older years. The RSPB, eager to distance itself from its perceived association with old Victorian-era women, ousted its own founder in favor of male leadership and more credibility in a patriarchal society.
References
Grinnell, J. 1901. Gold Hunting in Alaska. Chicago: David C. Cook Publishing Company.
Grinnell, E. and J. Grinnell. 1899. Our Feathered Friends. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., Publishers.
Grinnell, J. and E. Grinnell. 1900. “The Damn Bird.” Land of Sunshine 13 (2): 90-97.
Huntington, D., C. Davis, and E. Grinnell. 1915. Game Farming for Profit and Pleasure. Wilmington: Hercules Powder Co.
Unger, N. 2012. Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dr. Wrenn is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She is the co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis.
She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain’s First Colony (State University of New York Press 2021), and Vegan Witchcraft: Contemporary Magical Practice and Multispecies Social Change (Routledge 2026).
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