Naive Boars and Dummy Sows

What you see is a can of Boar-mate™ -- a commercial synthetic boar pheromone used in pig breeding. It aids in artificial insemination and training “naïve boars” to mount “dummy sows" which are simple rubber-covered metal constructions designed to harvest sperm. These two bizzare reproductive technologies became a starting point for a chaper on swine sex co-authored by Marianna Szczygielska and Agata Kowalewska.

The chapter titled “Naïve Boars and Dummy Sows: Porcine Sex and the Politics of Purity” investigates discourses on purity and sterility mobilized for the sake of biosecurity to explore how the interstice between domestication and wildness informs porcine-human relations. Since the 2014 outbreak of the African Swine Fever in Poland, wild boars have been culled en masse for the protection of the pork industry. The chapter analyzes the porous intraspecies boundary between pigs and wild boars from queer and feminist materialist perspectives as the source of insecurities in the face of the disease to show how control over porcine sex in factory farming and wildlife management is key for the politics of purity at stake.

Szczygielska, Marianna, and Agata Kowalewska. “Naïve Boars and Dummy Sows: Porcine Sex and the Politics of Purity.” In Feminist Animal and Multispecies Studies: Critical Perspectives on Food and Eating. eds. Kadri Aavik, Kuura Irni, and Milla-Maria Joki (Brill, 2023): 45-69. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004679375_003