Oma

My oma (grandma) always told me to look for certain qualities in a partner, but the one she emphasized the most was how a person interacts with animals. She believes that you can tell how kind, compassionate, loving, and patient a person is based on the way he or she interacts with animals, mostly pets. While reading Heidi Nast’s piece, “Critical Pet Studies?,” I  was reminded of the words of wisdom my oma expressed to me many years ago when Nast stated, “Those with no affinity for pets or those who are afraid of them are today deemed social or psychological misfits and cranks, while those who love them are situated as morally or even spiritually superior” (375). My oma’s words directly relate to this, but are taken a step further because if someone is not loving or caring toward animals, then he or she is not worth dating. This logic or judgment creates a hegemonic structure within pet and human relations, which goes mostly unrecognized by scholars who primarily focus on “animal rights issues of human abuses of animals,” while also not considering pets (375). I, like Josephine Donovan states in “Animal Rights and Feminist Theory,” have also seen an inequity in male and female animal rights activists and theorists who approach the topic of animal rights differently. She states that women in the field have looked at the discussion in terms of “emotional bonding with animals,” who advocate for better treatment of animals based on their capacity to form emotional attachments and connections with each other and humans (351). Arguments such as these can be problematic and Donovan agrees with Peter Singer who she says believes “one cannot simply turn uncritically to women as a group or to a female value system as a source for a humane relationship ethic with animals”  (352). Although I strongly believe in human and pet relationships, the issue of animal rights should not solely or dominantly be approached from the lens of emotional attachment because it hierarchalizes pets over other animals that humans are not able to make close connections with. It also places the treatment of animals in a gendered category of language because our society is socialized to consider emotional attachment as something female, which adds to the problematic nature of the argument. Nonetheless, I still find myself hyperaware of the ways people interact with animals and pets, but it is not the determinant of whether or not I will date a person because a variety of factors go into whether or not someone feels inclined to pet or play with an animal. These factors can include trauma, allergies, unfamiliarity, etc. Taking this into consideration, I still feel that my oma has a point in terms of looking at how a person interacts with animal and pets; however, my observations must not lead to judgment because there is much more going on in terms of the sentiment of the interaction.