The Reinforcement of Rape Culture in My Family’s Visit to a Bird Sanctuary this Summer

Wes and Taegan

(Wes is positioning to match the bird.)

During a short family trip earlier in the summer, my family of four visited a bird sanctuary, where trained professionals care for and, when possible, rehabilitate injured birds of all types and offer educational programming on the ecological importance of birds and other rescued animals to the public. The visit included a brief “show,” during which three employees brought out a number of animals and discussed the particular environmental challenges and ecological significances ​of their breeds. Despite the position of the amphitheatre seating in the full sun of the early afternoon, my two children and I took front-row seats, while my pale-skinned husband stayed in the back, under the shade of a nearby tree. The main speaker was a knowledgeable 30-something male, engaging enough and even funny at times. He easily commanded the small space of the stage, alerting unaware passersby at several points during the talk to the fact that he was doing a show right now and that they were welcome to join the audience but that they needed to use quiet voices if they chose not to join so that they wouldn’t disrupt the presentation. The other two participants were female and in their early 20s. In praising her handling of a tarantula, the man identified one of the women as the sanctuary's ”new intern.”

Toward the end of the show, the new intern wheeled out a large cage. Both she and the man geared up, putting on long falconry gloves, and then he opened the cage and introduced a very large black bird with a featherless pink head and sharp, curved black beak. It was a turkey vulture, he said, and went on to discuss the function and importance of scavenger birds. As he was talking, the vulture flew up to the new intern’s forearm. It took a couple of quick steps in the direction of her body and, probably instinctively, she turned her head. The vulture then landed three strikes with his beak on her scalp in quick succession. The man, cheekily stating that, although everyone else at the sanctuary thought the intern was doing a good job, the turkey vulture just didn't seem to like her, moved to the woman's side and signaled for the bird to transfer from her arm to his.

The man went on to express frustration that the vulture didn't seem interested in demonstrating tricks this afternoon, saying, “C’mon, don't you want to fly?” The vulture eventually obliged, flying back to the intern’s arm and again moving quickly toward her head. Although clearly panicked, she was more prepared this time and, reaching into a pouch on her belt, grabbed a chunk of meat and threw it to the ground. The vulture hopped down and quickly ate the meat. It headed right back toward the intern, and, again, she deterred it with a bite of meat. This continued for a tense few minutes, the man persisting in his attempts to coax the bird to perform flying exercises for the crowd, until the intern, speaking for the first time, interrupted with, “I've only got a couple more pieces of meat!”

Picking up with his monologue again, the man started throwing his meat to the ground, too, but not as quickly as the intern had. Unfed for a couple of seconds, the huge bird headed back to the intern’s head, this time striking her in the cheek and the back of the neck before the intern managed to distract him by tossing the last of her meat on the ground. The man continued to talk and toss his pieces down to the vulture. Seeing what lay ahead as he neared the end of his stash, the woman interrupted again, saying several times in quick succession, “I don't want to do this.”

By this time, I was flinching every time the bird moved, and I had made worried eye contact with my 14-year-old daughter several times. I was saying under my breath, “I can't believe he's allowing this to continue,” when the vulture sauntered over to the intern and fiercely pecked her on her bare shin. The man, still talking to the audience, threw a chunk of meat to lure the bird toward him. The woman backed away from the bird, said, “I'm going inside,” and exited the stage into the adjacent nature center. Clearly perturbed, the man sighed and rolled his eyes. Finally, he gave up his efforts to make the animal perform and, using his last piece of meat, lured it back into its cage.

Numb, I watched as the man brought out the final act, a crow that was able to take dollar bills from kids’ hands. Trying to recover, I handed my eight-year-old a five and watched as the crow adeptly folded it and stuffed it into a donation box. Afterwards, we looked around the nature center, where I chanced upon overhearing a conversation between the intern and the man leading the show. She had an open wound on her check the size of a dime, and she told him that all of the bites had drawn blood. He expressed amazement, saying the bird had never acted this way with anyone else, and advised her to “clean them really well.”

I started crying as I left the amphitheatre and nature center area. My husband and kids were stunned; I rarely cry, I’m not a “highly sensitive person.” Sure, I explicate in great detail our encounters with others and overanalyze nearly every exhibit that we attend, often with a wry wit and a sharp tongue and, yes, even in front of my children. But I don’t cry. I thought about the bird show frequently in the next several days, until I figured out what had really bothered me about the display we had witnessed.

The show was disturbing in three major ways. First of all, it was completely phallocentric. Neither woman spoke during the show; instead, they acted as a models, akin to the women I remember turning letters on Wheel of Fortune and demonstrating the functions of new vacuum cleaners and the like on The Price is Right when I watched these shows as a child. Like Pat Sajak and Bob Barker, the man leading the bird show was significantly older than his models and exercised complete control over their onstage behavior--at least until the new intern ran from the stage. Ecofeminists might point out that, in a similar fashion to how he treated the women, the man leading the show also attempted to control the animals. The vulture’s unexpected unwillingness to perform angered him. In fact, his inability to control the bird caused him to ignore all reason, allowing the bird to continue to assault the intern as he tried, over and over, to bend the animal to his will. The man’s angry body language and sigh as he put the bird back in its cage, as well as his comments to the intern after the show, suggested his unwillingness to accept his lack of control over the animal and his blaming of the bird and/or the intern for the bird’s failure to engage in the pre-planned flying routine. The man exercised more complete control of the space of the amphitheatre, as evidenced by his comments to the sanctuary visitors who unwittingly happened upon the show. He was in charge of the pacing of the show as well, signalling to the two women assisting him when he wanted them to bring certain animals on stage or remove them to the adjacent nature center. Most of all, he dominated the narrative. From a place of total self-assurance, he shared facts about the animals in the show and offered tips as to how audience members could aid in conservation efforts. He easily asserted subjectivity by also discussing his personal experiences of working with the animals.

Indeed, the show symbolically enacted the very worse potentiality of a male-dominated culture--rape. Whether you read the bird or the man as the rapist is fairly irrelevant. It was the vulture that penetrated the woman’s body with his beak, a phallic part of its body used to attack prey and rip apart flesh, much as a penis is used against a victim during a rape. But it was the man who took advantage of his intern’s position of subservience, belittled her initial attack, overrode her attempts to resist her attacker, ignored her “no,” allowed her no other recourse than the humiliation of disrupting the show in order to escape, placed the onus for the attack on her after the event, and dismissed her injuries as just in need of a good washing. Certainly, then, the bird only enacted that which the man did on a psychic level--the stripping from a woman of her dignity and sense of worth.

Finally, my third point. Probably the most troubling part of this experience was my complicity in it. Around 10 other adults and I were silent as the intern was attacked--repeatedly--by a vulture, as she panicked in anticipation of the vulture’s next moves, as her efforts to resist continued attack were thwarted, as the man on stage allowed her injury and humiliation. Any one of us could have raised our hand or stood or just called out to ask the man to please put the bird away, but no one did. Also importantly, we visually consumed the assaulted woman and even contributed to the panoptic system of discipline that kept her from asserting herself more forcefully against the man leading the show. Almost certainly, viewers objectified both women in the show, perceiving them as little more than fixtures meant for the display of the animals, much as we perceived the models in 1980s game shows as accessories for contestant prizes. Worse yet, viewers may have even gained the kind of catharsis as they would from watching a sexual assault on an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. I even ended up paying for the show, as I have surely paid to watch rape scenes before on TV and in movies! Regardless of how the incident affected audience members, the fact of the audience definitely affected the victim of the bird’s attack. The shape of the amphitheatre and the eyes of spectators reinforced the new intern’s subservience to the man in charge of the show and prohibited her from easily escaping him and his bird.

Months later, I really don’t think that it’s taking it too far to say that this incident at the bird sanctuary served as an affirmation of rape culture. I fear that it reinforced messages that my children likely receive from many other sources--that people in privileged positions are ultimately in charge, that the assault of the vulnerable is sometimes okay and/or deserved and/or even entertaining, and that there’s not much that we can do to change the system that we have. Instead, I’d like for my children to know that they have the right to exit any dangerous or uncomfortable situation at any time no matter how many people are watching as well as the responsibility to honor and assist others who express the desire to stop what they are doing or what is happening to them.