The Oxen at the Intersection: A Collision (or, Bill and Lou Must Die: A Real-Life Murder Mystery from the Green Mountains of Vermont) - Softcover

Jones, Pattrice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590564626 ISBN 13: 9781590564622

Publisher: Lantern Publishing & Media, 2014

Synopsis

When Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont, announced that two oxen called Bill and Lou would be killed and turned into hamburgers despite their years of service as unofficial college and town mascots, pattrice jones and her colleagues at nearby VINE Sanctuary offered an alternative scenario: to allow the elderly bovines to retire to the sanctuary. What transpired after this simple offer was a catastrophe of miscommunication, misdirection, and misinterpretations, as the college dug in its heels, activists piled on, and social media erupted.

Part true-crime mystery, part on-the-ground reportage, and part sociocultural critique, The Oxen at the Intersection is a brilliant unearthing of the assumptions, preconceptions, and biases that led all concerned with the lives and deaths of these two animals to fail to achieve their ends. How and why the threads of this story unspooled, as jones reveals, raises profound questions—most particularly about how ideas rooted in history, race, gender, region, and speciesism intersect and complicate strategy and activism, and their desired outcomes. In the end, notes jones, we must always ask, Where’s the body?


The Oxen at the Intersection is a brilliant case study of the tragedy of Bill and Lou, illuminating a perfect storm of speciesism, locovorist ideology, ableism, sexism, and psychological compulsion. Humans in the grip of an idée fixe are a terrifying force, and nonhuman animals keep paying the price. How can animal advocacy interrupt this cataclysm? We failed Lou and Bill, and pattrice jones' superb book shows us why we failed, and how we might do better in future.
—Sue Donaldson, co-author of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights

About this title

About the Author

pattrice jones is an ecofeminist writer, scholar, and activist who, along with Miriam Jones, cofounded VINE Sanctuary, an LGBTQ-run farmed animal sanctuary that operates within an understanding of the intersection of oppressions. She is the author of Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World: A Guide for Activists and Their Allies (Lantern, 2007), and has contributed chapters to Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth (Bloomsbury, 2014); Confronting Animal Exploitation: Grassroots Essays on Liberation and Veganism (McFarland, 2013); Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2011); Sistah Vegan: Food, Identity, Health, and Society (Lantern, 2010); Contemporary Anarchist Studies (Routledge, 2009); Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (AK Press, 2006); and Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (Lantern, 2004). Her portion of the proceeds of the sale of The Oxen at the Intersection will go to VINE. pattrice is pictured here with Luna.

Review

The Oxen at the Intersection is a brilliant case study of the tragedy of Bill and Lou, illuminating a perfect storm of speciesism, locovorist ideology, ableism, sexism, and psychological compulsion. Humans in the grip of an idée fixe are a terrifying force, and nonhuman animals keep paying the price. How can animal advocacy interrupt this cataclysm? We failed Lou and Bill, and pattrice jones' superb book shows us why we failed, and how we might do better in future. --Sue Donaldson, co-author of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights

About this edition

• Publisher: Lantern Publishing & Media
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1590564626
• ISBN 13: 9781590564622
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256