Author: jpitas1

Somebody call the Poo-lice! Using dog-poop DNA to police private property

by JH Pitas

“I’ve spent my entire morning researching dog poop DNA and I’m pissed lol”1

Today nearly 40% of households in the United States own a dog – 1.6 dogs per household to be exact – which translates to roughly 77 million dogs in total. Since each dog produces about 250 pounds of poop each year, that means there is a staggering 21 billion pounds (or 10.5 million tons if you prefer) of dog poop produced annually in the United States alone.2 That’s a lot of dog poop. And something has to be done with it. The pet industry overall has grown substantially in the last several decades to include all sorts of auxiliary goods and services, including dog poop collection services, and an diverse array of products to make the acts of picking up, storing, and transporting all that poop less unpleasant. But one of the newest and most creative uses of dog poop is to police private property.

“I received an e mail from my apartment complex stating … they found a ‘sample next to a dog waste station that tested positive’ for my dog and they are slapping a $250 fine on me.”3

Four days prior to getting this email and at the behest of their property management company, the anonymous Reddit user quoted twice now above submitted a DNA sample from their dog (collected via a cheek swab) to the company PooPrints. Technicians at PooPrints were able to match DNA from the cheek swab to DNA found in an illicit pile of poop sampled by property managers a few weeks prior. The property management company then used this test result as justification to fine the dog owner for violating property regulations which require people to pick up after their dogs. Overall sentiment from other Reddit users in this post was mixed – some sympathized with the dog owner who claimed that the sample match must have been erroneous. Others dismissed these claims and argued the dog owner got what they deserved for being irresponsible – after all, DNA doesn’t lie. Only one user pointed out the broader context of using dog DNA to police private property: “Damn move your ass outta there. That’s some straight up 1984 dictator style oppression right there.”

When I first learned about PooPrints, I also spent a fair chunk of my morning researching dog poop DNA. As an animal geographer and also a geographer of waste and infrastructure I find PooPrints a fascinating intersection of concerns. And PooPrints is also intriguing to meas a person who often thinks about the ways surveillance technology is subtly (and not so subtly) infiltrating our everyday lives. One thing that immediately stands out to me is the way PooPrints leverages non-humans and their bodily traces in infrastructural networks which harness DNA technology to police private properties, something which prior to this might have been only seen in conservation or zoological spaces. This seems like an expansion of surveillance with potentially dangerous future implications. PooPrints also encapsulates one of the most enduring lessons that I’ve learned from researching waste disposal for my dissertation: capitalism is constantly searching for ways to extract value from waste, and enroll it into systems of value production. And furthermore, the techno-infrastructural networks which work to manage and extract value from waste often dovetail with the establishment and enforcement of social norms and expectations – in this case that one picks up after their dog. Consequently, I’ve now spent far more than just a morning thinking about dog poop, DNA, and what this all means.

But what about the 77 million dogs producing 21 billion pounds of poop each year? Nobody likes having to live with dog waste, and it can a serious environmental hazard, especially in high concentrations. Is PooPrints – with it’s normative and disciplinary effects – actually positioned to help address the growing problem of dog poop in the United States? PooPrints certainly thinks so:

It is estimated only 60% of dog owners pick up dog poop consistently. This, in turn, leaves a lot of unscooped poop.

Unscooped dog poop can leach into the [local] watershed and decay, releasing compounds that can kill fish, and any animal in the vicinity that relies on that water. The nutrients in the waste can even cause excessive algae growth that will upset the natural balance of water ecosystems.

Many solutions have been proposed to combat the dog waste issue but only one has been proven to be a successful enforcement method: Doggie DNA.4

This quote from a PooPrints blog post about The Dangers of Dog Poop makes it seem like PooPrints is doing a public service, and positions property managers who want to eliminate improperly disposed of poop as good stewards of the environment. But why is this method so effective? Before PooPrints, an apartment complex would usually have to catch an irresponsible pet owner in the act – after all dog poops are not exactly snowflakes, unique in each and every way. At least to the naked eye! In reality, each dog poop contains large amounts of unique DNA material. And thanks to the wonders of modern science, DNA taken from dog poop can be matched to DNA profiles of individual dogs themselves. Now dogs and poops can be definitively matched, and their naughty non-scooping humans punished for their dirty deeds.

All of this is probably starting to sound like weird parody of crime-scene investigation shows like CSI, and honestly that’s not too far off base. PooPrints describes their process in 5 easy to understand steps. First, a dog’s DNA is sampled using a cheek-swab. Second, the DNA from the swab is entered into the DNA World Pet Registry (a rather grandly named database maintained by PooPrints). Third, employees of property management companies collect samples of improperly disposed of poop using a specialized collection kit. Fourth, the test kits are returned to BioPet Laboratories for PooPrint sample processing. Fifth, a “unique genetic profile is generated and matched to the offending canine.”5 PooPrints partitions their database by property, and checks each sample of improperly disposed of poop against the dog DNA registered to that property. And PooPrints maintains records of DNA from all the improperly disposed of poops found on a property over time, so that when a new dog is added to the database their DNA is checked against this database of past poops and their owners can be retro-actively fined. This is exactly what happened to the Reddit user quoted at the start of this post, who received a fine for poop that was found several weeks before their dog was registered in PooPrints’ DNA World Pet Registry.

Geographer of technology and infrastructure Kathryn Furlong writes how small technologies (like dog poop DNA testing) can have big impacts on infrastructural networks. These mediating technologies can transform already existing infrastructural networks, making them more equipped to deal with big problems.6 Just like there are mediating technologies, there are also mediating objects, which embody technology and transform the performance of networks. These objects can be pieces of physical infrastructure of all types, especially if we define infrastructure contextually to mean anything which facilitates the smooth running of things as it pertains to systems like waste disposal.7 The history of waste disposal infrastructure is full of mediating objects big and small – mechanized trash trucks, plastic household trash cans, flush toilets, drains, etc – which have enabled and sustained our systems of waste management for decades. And these infrastructural networks are coupled with social technologies which leverage things like fines to enforce participation. This is part of the reason capitalism has endured and intensified despite producing staggering amounts of waste. PooPrints serves as a mediating technology for property managers seeking to make their already existing infrastructure like designated dog walking zones, collection bag dispensers, and specialized waste bins more effective by providing a strong incentive for residents to comply with requirements that they use them. But does this do anything to address the broader environmental risks of dog poop, like PooPrints claims on their website? And can DNA testing dog poop actually help keep us from drowning in the 77 million tons of dog shit produced each year in the United States? Or is this rhetoric just greenwashing a disciplinary program meant to protect private property? And is this an example, as some scholars of surveillance have argued, of a disproportionately invasive response to a trivial problem?8 And, if dog poop DNA testing is a mediating object in networks of waste management infrastructure, can it also have a similarly transformational effect on networks of surveillance?

I don’t know if there is any available data on whether or not PooPrints is having an effect on things like water quality in urban areas. This might substantiate or disprove some of the claims made in the PooPrints blog post. But there has certainly been a social effect of apartments and other property management groups making use of PooPrints over the last few years. I learned about PooPrints from a different Reddit post, where a user was asking if it was legal for their apartment complex to require they give PooPrints a DNA sample from their dog. They posted a screenshot of a text message from their property manager asking them to submit a cheek-swab to PooPrints or risk having their lease agreement terminated. But there was little discussion of legality, nor were there specifics from the lease agreement posted. However a few years earlier someone did post the same question along with a portion of their lease agreement to a subreddit specifically geared towards legal advice.9 The consensus seemed to be that it was as enforceable as any other portion of a pet agreement (such as one requiring registration of pets in general). It would seem then that regardless of the veracity of environmental claims and such, a service like PooPrints will persist and grow so long as it provides a viable way for capital to police private property, and to generate value through fines.

I’m afraid this is really all I have to say about PooPrints for right now, but that’s not to say there aren’t all sorts of questions I still have and still want to answer. To date there are only a few scholarly articles that engage with PooPrints, and none from an animal geographic perspective, so there’s a lot more left to say about dog poop, DNA, and surveillance. And I didn’t even touch on other tough subjects like social justice, issues with disability and support animals, and so on. PooPrints, like so many facets of capitalism today, is both gripping and horrifying at the same time, and writing this blog has been a good way for me to think through it. It’s gripping because of the way it enrolls poop into networks of infrastructure. And it’s horrifying because it reduces DNA analysis and surveillance to an incredibly banal level in ways that will surely have future implications. I don’t really have any substantive suggestions on how to combat this kind of creeping horror. But one Reddit user did have an idea, left in response to the most recent post about PooPrints (and the post which introduced me to the service): if capitalism is going to start using our pets DNA as a tool for social control, than it may be “time [for us humans] to start shitting in the yard” too.10 That’s certainly one way to do it.

Endnotes:

1:https://www.reddit.com/r/dogs/comments/bj4uiy/vent_help_pooprints_apartment_slapping_a_250_fine/

2:https://www.statista.com/topics/1258/pets/

3:https://www.reddit.com/r/dogs/comments/bj4uiy/vent_help_pooprints_apartment_slapping_a_250_fine/

4:https://www.pooprints.com/the-dangers-of-dog-poop/

5:https://www.pooprints.com/how-it-works/

6:Furlong, K. (2011). Small technologies, big change: Rethinking infrastructure through STS and geography. Progress in Human Geography, 35(4), 460-482.

7:Moore, S. A. (2012). Garbage matters: Concepts in new geographies of waste. Progress in Human Geography, 36(6), 780-799.

8:Forensic science and environmental offences: Litter, DNA analysis and surveillance, by Tersia Oosthuizen, Loene M. Howes, Rob White

9:https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/6l0op9/am_i_legally_obligated_to_provide_my_apartment/

10:https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1194hbb/this_has_gotta_be_a_hoax_please_tell_me_this_isnt/

Defining Animal Geography: An International Perspective

By Julie Urbanik and Sarah Bortolamiol

It was our pleasure to participate in the AAG 2022 Panel Session, The Future of Animal Geography, organized by John-Henry Pitas and Mariya Shcheglovitova. Given that the brevity of the opening comments during the session did not allow for a full explanation of the key points we wanted to convey about the international community and animal geography definitions emerging from our survey, we are happy to share that material with everyone via this brief article. Our aim is to lay out the preliminary work we have done and to invite questions and suggestions from readers. Our hope is that this material will be helpful to the community as we continue to deepen the impact and reach of animal geography.

While contemporary animal geography has been developing and expanding over the past two decades, debates about the sub-field (e.g., name, definition, goals) remain situated largely within the North American/UK context and lack cross-cultural discussions. Causes and consequences of Covid-19 led us to think about how animal geography is practiced/understood internationally; and the move to virtual platforms during isolation made us realize the amount of animal geography-related material we were missing out on.

We decided to undertake the first global survey of the field during the summer of 2021, and we conducted the survey from September to October of 2021, using the free, globally accessible Google Forms platform. We personally contacted and invited 263 individuals (either self-identified animal geographers we know or via snowball referrals to individuals with an interest in animal geography and/or animals and place/space) from 38 countries, as well as all members of the Animal Geography Specialty Group, to participate. We had 168 people agree to do the survey, and we ultimately received 141 responses from 24 countries.

Figure 1: Map of Survey Respondents

The vast majority of respondents were faculty members or institutionally-based researchers (56%) who may or may not have teaching workloads. Roughly 54% self-identified as animal geographers and 70% said they had published using an animal geography lens.

The survey was broken into sections addressing our three goals: (1) to explore how people around the world define/explain animal geography; (2) to determine whether or not there was enough interest in developing an official international animal geography community; and (3) to understand who does what, where, and how in terms of animal geography. In this blogpost, we focus on the first goal by sharing how respondents defined animal geography. We received definitions from 133 of the 141 respondents. Reasons for not providing a definition included, for example, statements such as “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” or “I feel as it should be those much closely [sic] involved in the field who come up with the conception they think is the most adequate”.

We undertook a two-step methodology to analyze the 133 definitions we received. The first method was to use R Studio to create word clouds and word frequency visualizations to show some of the differences in terminology and spellings that were used. To produce this we edited the definitions down to the key words (as spelled), removed prepositions and other unuseful phrasing such as “in my view” etc., and ran the keywords through R studio. We produced two versions of the word clouds and frequency charts in order to try and assess whether focusing on word roots versus full words would make a difference in terms of what the program would emphasize.

Figure 2: Word Clouds and Frequencies for Full Words (left) and Root Words (right)

We found this method helpful in getting us started in thinking about how respondents were, in a broad way, appropriating animal geography. What jumped out to us was the clear link between animal and human as the two-part focus of the definitions.

Our second method involved developing a preliminary typology of the respondents’ definitional focus. We were curious to see how the definitions would compare to the word clouds and word frequency charts which placed animals, humans, and space at the top in terms of pure counts. In order to make this typology we used our initial editing of responses to create the word clouds. Then we went through the definitions manually, first blindly and then cross-checking each other; and then did a final round of sorting into what has become four definitional foci.

It was actually difficult to classify the definitions and identify categorical themes given that we were unable to go back and ask respondents for clarification. In addition, respondents often provided fragments of definitions such as “human – nonhuman animal relations” or “paying attention to multi-species, an antidote to human geography.” We are in the process of looking for automatic or semi-automatic ways to identify common themes among definitions through topic modeling and/or other text classification techniques.

Figure 3: Preliminary Typology for Animal Geography Definitions

The most dominant category was what we have called “human-animal” – that is to say respondents defined animal geography as the study of human-animal relations. This echoes quite clearly the results from the word clouds/frequencies visualizations. Qualifiers for this focus included space/place/time, social categories, and mentions of territory and decentralizing the human. Examples, quoted in their entirety, include: “Animal geography is the study of how human-animal relations shape the production of space, place, and environment”; “Empirically and theoretically informed investigation of human-animal relations, with particular attention given to their spatial dimensions (how space and place matter in shaping human-animal relations and how human-animal relations shape space and place)”; and “The analysis of the different ways animal lives and spaces are influenced by human activities and how the animals find their places within or out of human societies”.

The next highest was what we’ve called “nonhuman-animal” – here respondents defined the focus as the study of nonhuman-animals themselves. Qualifiers included territory, space/place/time, experience/agency, and linked to more biogeographical concepts such as evolution and biodiversity. Examples include: “Focusing on place and areas as a way to understand animals’ positions;” “The intersections between space, place, and nonhuman animal life on earth;” and “Animal geography can be included in geography since one goal can be to explain how and why living and non-living entities are at a certain place. It gives to non-human animals a greater place than in ‘conventional geography’.”

The third grouping was what we’ve called “multi-species” – here respondents said the field is focused primarily on the study of multi-species relations. No respondent explained what was meant by multi-species or why they chose this term in lieu of human-animal, so we chose to make this a separate category since multi-species *seems* to imply something different than either human-animal or nonhuman-animal. Examples include: “Research on multispecies interactions and their spatiality;” “Hard to say. It could be defined as the study of the temporal/spatial distribution of heterotrophic communities, and Omo [sic] sapiens could be included in it;” and “In short, sets of multispecies relationships that produce spaces and organize more than human forms of life.”

The final, and smallest, grouping was what we’ve called “environment-humans-animals” – here respondents defined the field as primarily the study of the equal interplay between the three with qualifiers relating to space/place/time, but respondents were clear that the environmental conditions were the starting point and there was no mention of qualifiers related to social/cultural categories. Examples include: “Animal geography would consist, according to me, in the study of interactions and exchanges between humans and non-humans and between humans and non-humans and their living environment. It consists in the study of frictions, conflicts, cooperations, modalities of governance and co-presence;” “For me, animal geography is a branch of geography that is interested in the different ways in which animals occupy space and share it to cohabit with other beings;” and “Interactions between animals, people and the environment in space and time.”

After building out the word clouds and typology we reflected on five things that stood out to us that we have not had a full chance to develop at this point; however, we felt they were worth mentioning in the panel session and this article as food-for-thought moving forward.

The first is getting better clarity on the distinction between human-animal and multi-species. While we can make our own assumptions as to what the differences might be in the context of animal geography, we were unable to find a publication that succinctly explained when one or the other may be a better choice. For example, are those using multi-species instead of human-animal implying that all animal geography work should examine several species at one time instead of just human interaction with one animal species? Does multi-species mean a focus on flora, fauna, and the human and not just human/nonhuman species? Does this distinction matter? Or is this just a case of the academic trend to coin new terms for publication purposes?

A second item, related to the first, was our curiosity about how to disentangle respondents’ use of relations versus interactions versus coexistence. We know these words are often used both interchangeably and as different in the literature, but is it good/helpful/evolutionary for the field to convolute them? Definitionally, relations imply a longer-term experience while interactions could imply a specific, one-time experience. How does using one or the other shape what we, and those outside the field, understand animal geography to be?

A third item we were surprised to find was a near total absence of definitions that included concepts like critical and abolitionist – we had only two respondents (1 each) use these terms, as well as distinguishing animal geography, animal geographies, and animals’ geographies (the last two also only mentioned 1 time each). Given the increasing emphasis on critical animal geography, vegan geographies, and much of the work on industrial agriculture in North America/Europe, we thought we would see more “scholar-activist” style definitions than we did. What does that say about how we understand animal geography? What weight should such positions carry in our discussions of the future if they are of such negligible underlying focus? Given the marginalization of animal studies that still exists within the academy, and the emotive nature of animal rights and activism in the public sphere, we wondered whether we should have asked the question: what role do you see animal geographers playing in the discipline, the academy, and the public sphere?

We noticed a fourth issue related to methodology. There was virtually no mention of methods and zero mention of mapping – so are methods central to the identity of animal geography? Indeed, it is not so common to see maps in animal geography-based publications (at least in English), yet the absence of focus on methods possibly unique and/or essential to animal geography, of any type, was surprising. We wondered what it means if animal geography does not have a coherent and easily identifiable methods toolbox. Does this allow other disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology) to “co-opt” animal geography concepts? Does this dilute the impact of the field? Does it matter?

Our fifth reflection point was noticing that there seemed to be a split on starting from socio-economic-political framings versus starting from environmental conditions – how does this shape future trajectories of animal geography? Again, we did not think to ask how people arrived at animal geography (or an interest in it), so that is our loss in the survey data, but it made us really wonder how people are finding animal geography material to begin with. What differences in geography curriculums exist globally that would lead people finding animal geography from a biogeography starting point or from a social theory starting point? How might these starting points change what is seen as relevant topics/methods for study? Is such a difference helpful to the field or is there a chance of diffusing it even within Geography?

As a way to synthesize the initial work we have done on the definition of animal geography via the word clouds, the preliminary typology, and the five items we noticed, we presented the following three questions to the attendees to facilitate discussion:

1. How are we to understand what “animal geography” is without a cohesive definition?

2. Do we need a cohesive approach to understand our contributions to Geography itself as well as Human-Animal Studies/Animal Studies?

3. Without a cohesive definition are we risking losing ground to other disciplines using geographical concepts and calling it animal geography?

By doing so, we were not proposing that we have the answers to these questions, but saying that the differences we are finding in our international survey reveal a need to reflect more deeply on our foundational terminology if we want to be sure the global community is ‘speaking the same language’.

Regardless of definitional perspectives, it was clear from survey respondents that there is abundant interest in the broad topic of humans-nonhumans-place-space and we feel this shows there is ample opportunity to collaborate creatively within our discipline of geography, and with other humanities, social sciences, and life sciences disciplines. The next steps for us as we continue to analyze the results of the survey are to finalize our preliminary typology via likely topic modeling (any thoughts are welcomed!) and to delve into the remaining sections of the survey.

Please feel free to reach out to us with any questions and/or suggestions for us as we move forward.

AnGSG AAG 2022 Graduate Student Competition Winner

The AnGSG is pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s Graduate Student Presentation Competition at the 2022 AAG is Sarah-Maude Cossette, from the Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada). Sarah-Maude’s presentation, titled Observing each other: A multispecies fieldwork experience into the city interstices, impressed the judging panel with it’s novel methodological contributions, and it’s organized, professional presentation style. Sarah-Maude will receive a $150 price from the AnGSG for winning.

Congrats Sarah-Maude!

The judging was extremely close. Honorable mentions go to the other panelists, Gabrielle Perras St-Jean, Carley MacKay, and Courtney Berne, all of whom deserve thanks and commendations for their hard work and participation. Full presentation titles and more information about all participants is available in this year’s AnGSG newsletter

We hope that any graduate students currently developing, conducting, or writing about their own exciting animal geography related research projects will consider entering the competition when it is held again next year at AAG 2023.

Please reach out to jpitas1@umbc.edu with any contest questions or inquiries.

Emotional Support Animals and the Ethics of Care

By Aleksandra Craine

In early 2020 The United States Department of Transportation announced a revision to its Air Carrier Access Act. Previously, the ACAA required airlines to allow service animals on board, including the ambiguous emotional support animals (ESAs) category. This lack of clarity in the law, as well as lack of regulation and accountability, was a common target of criticism from legal scholarship and public comment alike. The revision, among other things, defines service animal narrowly as a trained dog, states that ESAs are not service animals, and allows airlines to require forms that establish training and certification of service animals. The revision was driven in large part by public misunderstanding of ESAs, including stories of “unconventional” ESAs, such as llamas and alligators, which have proliferated in the media in the last decade. Despite such stories, the overwhelming majority of support animals are still dogs.

To many, the DOT revision may seem like a good sense policy. After all, commentators across the media spectrum, including Washington Post and the New York Times, have derided those traveling with ESAs. They are called selfish, fragile, and snowflakes. They are accused of cheating the system. The politics of suspicion took hold, placing a burden of explanation on people with assistance animals. This was a call for drawing a clear line between health and debility, and between appropriate and inappropriate animal travel companions. The revision, according to the WP article, would prevent many people with ESAs from flying entirely.

As a doctoral student researching ways to improve animal-human relationships, I couldn’t help but think: instead of tightening the restrictions by drawing these exclusionary lines, why not instead relax them to make it easier to travel with all kinds of animals? Could we reframe ESAs not as furry (or scaly) entitlements, but as guides to a different way of being, an ethic of care that celebrates our interdependent relationships with animals and each other?

By excluding ESAs from air travel, we are essentially making a distinction between debility and health, and framing mental and emotional impairment in terms of an individual’s personal responsibility for their health. As debility scholar Alison Kafer (Kafer 2013) is a function of time and place; it does not exist without social meaning. By considering the anxiety of flying (for example) an issue of personal responsibility for one’s health we obscure the objective causes of this anxiety; we don’t question why airplanes and airports are such debilitating spaces.

The articles and the comments mocking and condemning ESAs are steeped in ableism, and highlight the prevalent dismissal of mental and emotional health conditions. There was a widespread belief in the rampant abuse of the system by “selfish” individuals who place their interests above public considerations. The frequent accusation of selfishness at a first glance suggests concern for public good. However, the accusation was leveled towards those with perceived impairments, as well as those perceived of simply gaming the system. A significant number of comments proposed that people who have difficulty coping with anxieties of air travel should find alternative methods of transportation, or stay home. Although these remarks do not explicitly challenge the validity of emotional conditions, there is a clear dismissive quality that once again hinges on personal responsibility for one’s health and behavior. It would be difficult to imagine an individual with visible physical disability, for instance, being told to “stay home”.

People with disabilities in general are often perceived as selfish and absorbed with their suffering, as well as a drain on the medical and welfare systems (as the cruel triage of Covid treatment perfectly illustrated). But as scholar-activist Fiona Kumari Campbell (Campbell 2012) points out, it is our ableist society that is inherently narcissistic with its relentless preoccupation with self-improvement and self-enhancement, to which I’d also add the neoliberal obsession with the pursuit of happiness.

The moral panic, and the subsequent ACAA revision also creates a sharp distinction in what kind of relationships we can have with animals in particular places. A licensed service dog is not a “pet”, it is a professional worker (obtained for a cost of up to $50,000). Pets, unlike service dogs that engage in “work” outside the home, belong to the domestic sphere of family, care, love and pleasure. “Comfort” is distinctly outlawed from the definition of a service animal. But why should these things be confined to the home? Why can’t an airplane be also made a place of care and love, as much as it is made one of misery?

And what about cats, llamas, ducks, alligators and the rest? These animals are not considered trainable, therefore they are unable to perform a real service, under the legal regulation. However, studies of veterans and therapy animals have shown that a simple touch by an animal provides significant benefit (Wlodarczyk 2019). While licensed dogs and miniature horses certainly provide invaluable services, we downplay emotional and affective labor by animals (and humans) as domestic, unproductive, or even indulgent.

Can “emotional support animal” be more than “code for the entitled excesses of a pet-obsessed society”, as the one Washington Post article put it? Could ESAs, through their connection with debility signify a relationship that not only accepts the amorphousness of illness, but actively embraces it as a fundamental part of life? Can they help create a coexistence based on the ethics of care that recognize the intersectionality of oppression, and stand against the violence inherent to social and cultural practices? That are based in relation but not reciprocity? Vulnerability but not burden?

The outrage over ESAs may seem petty and insignificant, but I see it as an opportunity to push back against the tropes of speciesism and ableism, and the relentless questioning, othering and demonizing of “unconventional” ways of being, living and thinking. A crucial aspect of the ethics of care is the radical acceptance and embrace of different knowledges and ways of life.

Sunaura Taylor, an artist, writer and activist who lives with a disability, proposed this kind of ethic in her book “Beasts of Burden” (Taylor 2017). In it she recounts a time when her grandmother told her she would never survive alone in nature. She would “die in the woods” without the care of others. “Yet my grandmother missed the fact that my able-bodied siblings would also eventually die in the woods if left alone with no human support or tools”, Taylor continues. “[…] the truth is that all of us are dependent”. We are dependent on other people, on animals, plants, microbes, minerals, chemicals, sunlight. Thus, the ethics of care must be rooted in the acknowledgment of our real, material interdependency. Instead of asserting that people who are “too fragile” to fly without an ESA should stay home, we must question our own fragility.