“Any Female Can Be Bred”: Researchers’ War on Female Bodies
Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence, forced reproduction, invasive medical procedures, and harm to pregnant animals and their babies.
Scheduled for Violation
Animal research targets individuals not only because of their species, but also because of their sex.
At the U.S.’s seven NIH-funded National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs), female monkeys are actually violated on a schedule.
Over.
And over.
And over.
The industry tries to hide this abuse behind a sterile euphemism: “timed mating.”
According to the NPRCs, this means “placing a single female macaque, who’s about to ovulate, with a male macaque for a limited period of time, to produce pregnancy with a known conception date.”
What “Timed Mating” Really Means
Here’s what “timed mating” really means in practice:
- A female macaque—whose menstrual cycles are very much like those of human women—are subjected to daily invasions, including vaginal swabs, blood draws, and urine tests.
- “[A]round the time of her ovulation or a little before that,” she is “delivered” to a male’s cage, where she is made to stay for days. There, in that tiny, barren, metal cell, she and her co-captor must engage in sex, with humans watching, documenting “intromission,” and waiting for “ejaculation.”
- If she resists, researchers label her “averse to mating” and “just use artificial insemination” to force semen inside her—because, as one NPRC executive puts it, “any female can be bred.”
- She is, then, subjected to a series of ultrasounds—often from inside a grotesque, metal cage that sees her clutching its bars while being violated—as well as “any experimental manipulations that the PI may want”. (The Wisconsin National Primate Research Centers tout the below-pictured restraining device as a wonderful thing, because the animals can be “taught to go into” from a “very young age”, and because it allows staff to “do a variety of procedures while the animals are conscious”.)
- During her pregnancy—and in what the NRPCs identify as the “most important and valuable part[s] of timed mating”—she may:
- be exposed to “infectious agents at any part of the gestation.”
- have “tissue like amniotic fluid” extracted from her body.
- have her fetus cut from her womb if “acquir[ing] an entire fetus” is what a researcher wants.
- If she is able and allowed to carry her baby to term, then, once her baby is taken from her or weaned, the cycle begins all over again.
Sexual Violence Disguised as “Science”
This is industrialized, taxpayer-funded sexual violence, cloaked in the language of “science.”
And, it mirrors the systemic rape of farmed animals—who, just like the female monkeys at the NPRCs, have their cycles monitored, their vaginas forcibly penetrated, and their babies stolen to maximize profit.
Indeed, Big Ag has hailed forced artificial insemination—institutionalized rape—as its first “great biotechnology.” And, just like “timed mating,” it’s about domination, objectification, and control—about stripping autonomy from female bodies for profit.
Species- and Sex-Discriminiation are Intertwined
This violence is not only species-based. It’s sex-based.
Because—when industry claims ownership over female bodies—it’s not just practicing speciesism. It’s also enforcing misogyny.
The logic is identical, and the harms are intertwined.
The Fight for Animal Liberation Is a Feminist Fight
That’s one reason animal liberation is, and always will be, a feminist fight.
Both movements fight for bodily autonomy.
Both reject the commodification of reproductive labor.
Both say: “No one should be forced to have sex. No one should be forced to reproduce.”
So, we must recognize that every time we speak up for nonhuman females, we’re speaking up for human females, too.
We’re saying: no body should be treated as property.
And that matters—because the war on female bodies doesn’t end at the species line. And neither may our resistance.