Queer ecologies of home: heteronormativity, speciesism, and the strange intimacies of crazy cat ladies

Abstract

This article extends Morrison, Johnston, and Longhurst’s argument that love is spatial, relational, and political by tracing the ways that home situates both intra- and interspecies intimacy. It examines the ‘crazy cat lady’ as a discourse that entangles heteronormative and speciesist rules for loving, living, and making ‘a home.’ In a post-industrial moment when pet love has become a centerpiece of ‘normal’ life, the crazy cat lady occupies a queer periphery. She not only loves cats too much, she loves them more than humans, instead of a husband, and literally in place of heteronormative domesticity. To understand these complicit logics, this article reconceptualizes home as a queer ecology in which the sociospatial politics of nature, gender, humanity, sexuality, animality, domesticity, and intimacy collide. Using this framework, this article examines how women-with-cats–the ‘real’ crazy cat ladies–(re)inhabit normative ideals in their everyday practices and how this multispecies homemaking unfolds through more-than-human agencies. In queering ecologies of home, this article offers animal, posthumanist, feminist and queer geographers of home, as well as everyday homemakers, a wi(l)der bestiary of conceptual tools to understand intimacies that entangle across the boundaries of home/nature, wild/domestic, queer/straight and human/animal.

Resumen

Este artículo extiende el argumento de Morrison, Johnston y Longhurst de que el amor es espacial, relacional y político al trazar las formas en que el hogar sitúa la intimidad intra e interespecies. Estudia a ‘la loca de los gatos’ como un discurso que entrecruza reglas heteronormativas y especiesistas para amar, vivir y formar ‘un hogar’. En un momento postindustrial cuando el amor a la mascota se ha vuelto una pieza central de la vida ‘normal’, la loca de los gatos ocupa una periferia queer. No sólo ama demasiado a los gatos, los ama más que a los humanos, en vez de a un marido y literalmente en vez de una domesticidad heteronormativa. Para comprender esta lógica cómplice, este artículo reconceptualiza al hogar como a una ecología queer en la cual la política socioespacial de la naturaleza, el género, la humanidad, la sexualidad, la animalidad, la domesticidad y la intimidad se encuentran. Utilizando este marco de trabajo, este artículo analiza cómo las mujeres-con-gatos – ‘las ‘verdaderas’ locas de los gatos – (re)habitan los ideales normativos en sus prácticas cotidianas y cómo este mantenimiento de hogar multiespecies se desenvuelve a través de agencias más-que-humanas. Al incorporar la idea de ecologías del hogar queer, este artículo ofrece a lxs geografxs del hogar animales, post-humanistas, feministas y queer así como a lxs amxs de casa cotidianxs, un bestiario más amplio (y más salvaje) de herramientas conceptuales para comprender las intimidades que se enredan a lo largo de los límites de hogar/naturaleza, salvaje/doméstico, queer/heterosexual y humano/animal.

摘要

本文透过追溯家庭置放内部与跨物种之间的亲密性之方式，延伸莫里森、詹斯顿和朗赫斯特有关爱是空间的、关係性以及关乎政治之主张。本文检视“疯狂爱猫女士”作为与对于爱、生活和打造“家庭”的异性恋常规与物种歧视相互交缠的论述。在后工业时期，当对宠物的爱护成为“正常”生活的核心时，疯狂爱猫女士便佔据了酷儿的边陲。她不仅过于爱猫、爱猫超过人类，取代了丈夫，并确实代替了异性恋常规的居家性。为了理解这些串通一气的逻辑，本文重新将家概念化为酷儿生态学，其中自然、性别、人性、性慾、兽性、居家性和亲密性的社会空间政治相互碰撞。本文利用此一架构，检视与猫共居的女性——“真正的”疯狂爱猫女士——如何于她们的每日生活实践中（再）栖身于常规式的典范，以及此一多重物种的家庭打造，如何透过不仅是人类的行动者进行开展。在酷儿化家庭生态中，本文提供了家庭的动物、后人文主义、女权主义和酷儿地理学者，以及每日生活的家庭打造者一个更为宽广（且野性）的动物寓言集之概念工具，以理解与家／自然、野生／居家、酷儿／异性恋，以及人类／动物的边界之间交缠的亲密性。

Keywords:

• Home
• intimacy
• pet love
• queer ecology
• crazy cat lady
• discourse analysis

Palabras clave:

• Hogar
• intimidad
• amor a las mascotas
• ecología queer
• loca de los gatos
• análisis de discurso

关键词:

• 家
• 亲密性
• 宠物之爱
• 酷儿生态学
• 疯狂爱猫女士
• 论述分析

Acknowledgments

I thank Michael Brown, Larry Knopp, Kim England, Victoria Lawson and the insightful writers in her 2015 professional writing seminar at the University of Washington (UW), María Elena García and the UW Animal Studies Working Group, Aaron Carico, and Lynn Bosworth for their vital feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Many thanks also to three anonymous reviewers and Lynda Johnston for their thoughtful, productive provocations throughout the review process.

Notes

1. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=crazy+cat+lady, accessed March 6, 2015.

2. According to Google n-gram, which charts the historical prevalence of phrases within Google’s digitized corpus of American English books, ‘crazy cat lady’ usage increased twelvefold between 1994 and 2008.

3. http://www.amazon.com/Accoutrements-Crazy-Lady-Action-Figure/dp/B00HZSMWMY, accessed May 24, 2015.

4. Originally aired November 13, 2009., accessed May 24, 2015.

5. All tweets were accessed from https://twitter.com/catladyprobl3ms, October 17, 2013 (8:24am EST).

6. The queer orientations and affective boons of this homemaking also reflect societal imbalances of feminized, privatized care, including care for pets (Lawson 2007; Power 2008). Intimacy is also always a site for the manifestation of gendered and other inequalities (Peterson 2016).

7. http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/confessions-animal-hoarding/videos/animal-hoarding-shelley-and-chris-hit-their-limit/, accessed March 6, 2015.

8. While a rich analysis of race and class are beyond this article, they structure parameters of ‘normal’ intimacy, domesticity, and humanity.