discrimination and hate, equality, human rights images

Female Animalization, A Collection of Images

Female animalization is the depiction of women as animals, or as hybrid human-animals. It’s in fact a subgenre of female objectification, which is itself a subgenre of dehumanization (see also here). Depicting a woman as an animal means taking away her human characteristics and can lead to gender discrimination. It’s easier to deny the rights of an animal than the rights of an individual human being.

female animalization

(source)
snake woman

snake woman

(source)

female animalization

female animalization

female animalization

female animalization

(source)
frog woman

frog woman

(source)
pig woman

pig woman

(source)
Hillary Clinton as a pig

Hillary Clinton as a pig

(source)
dog woman

dog woman

(source)

peta ad pamela anderson as a pig

tiger woman tigra

(source)

And of course there’s this infamous example of Michelle Obama’s face turned into a monkey face:

Michelle Obama monkey face

Michelle Obama monkey face

(source, examples of Bush and Osama bin Laden as monkeys are here)

Some time ago, this image was the first to appear when people googled for images of Michelle Obama. Because of this Google issued this statement:

Sometimes Google search results from the Internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries. We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google.

Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. A site’s ranking in Google’s search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.

The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results. Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page.

We apologize if you’ve had an upsetting experience using Google. We hope you understand our position regarding offensive results.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

At this point, I should probably mention that men as well can be animalized, and have been to great political effect throughout history. Here’s one example:

jap rat

More examples featuring hated outgroups here.

More on advertising.

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14 thoughts on “Female Animalization, A Collection of Images

  1. I hope, then, that you accept the corollary of your position (for obvious reasons), which is that male animalization is inherently wrong and dehumanizing. So, something like this is deemed immoral. In the same vein, we should also be very appalled by the new movie, Avatar, which recently come out in theaters because of its depictions of humans (including females!) as non-humans. Of course, I think that’s rather absurd, if I may say so.

    • Male or female animalization can of course be equally appalling, although female animalization is often a corrolary of gender discrimination, making it morally more reprehensible. I say “can”, because the context and the intent, as well as the possible consequences are obviously crucial as to whether it’s a moral issue or not. You can view Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck as forms of animalization, but as far as I can tell there hasn’t been any moral controversy about this, precisely because the Disney characters aren’t inscribed into a narrative of oppression or submission, something which is the case with the “black woman/African animal” analogy in the examples in this post (or the “female/pig (i.e. consumption object)” analogy).

  2. Pingback: An explanation of our search results. «

  3. olivia siegel says:

    Hello, I just think what you are doing is sick and cruel! You are a sexist and racist person! Whoever made this website with these pictures, you should be ashamed of yourself! I really hope that one day you see what you are doing wrong.

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