The English language animalizes and naturalizes women in cultural contexts where women and nonhuman animals are already viewed as inferior to men and male-identified culture. Women are referred to pejoratively as dogs, cats, catty, pussycats, pussies, pets, bunnies, dumb bunnies, cows, sows, foxes, chicks, bitches, beavers, old bats, old hens, old crows, queen bees, cheetahs, vixen, serpents, bird-brains, hare-brains, elephants, and whales. Women cackle, go to hen parties, henpeck their husbands, become old biddies (old hens no longer sexually attractive or able to reproduce), and social butterflies. Animalizing women in a sexist (or, patriarchal) culture that views animals as inferior to “humans” reinforces and attempts to legitimate women's alleged inferior status to men (see Adams 1990; Joan Dunayer 1995; Warren 2000). Similarly, the English language feminizes nature in cultural contexts that view women and nature as inferior to men and male-identified culture. Mother Nature (not Father Nature) is raped, mastered, controlled, conquered, mined; her (not his) secrets are penetrated, and her womb (men don't have one) is put into the service of the man of science (not woman of science, or simply scientist). Virgin timber is felled, cut down. Fertile (not potent) soil is tilled, and land that lies fallow is useless or barren, like a woman unable to conceive a child.