Focusing solely on one social justice campaign ignores the way multiple oppressions often intersect, and can result in certain groups of people feeling excluded or marginalised. Stephanie Lai discusses the intersectionality of racism and classism in animal rights activism and why we need to pay attention.
14 November 2010
Intersectionality in animal rights: the basics
I’m going to start with a bit of an introduction to intersectionality.
Intersectionality is about the confluence of ‘isms.’ From Wiki (not a great source, I know, but it’s a good definition), we get:
Intersectionality is a sociological theory suggesting that—and seeking to examine how—various socially and culturally constructed categories of discrimination interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to systematic social inequality.
I know; that’s lots of big words. Think of it like this: at its most basic, intersectionality is about not being single-issue, and acknowledging that not everyone is the same.
Here are some examples to get you thinking. They are not necessarily animal rights related, but they are all real:
In 2009, Michelle Obama was serving food at a soup kitchen for homeless people, and a homeless man was spotted taking a photo of her using his mobile phone. There was a bit of a fuss over this, with statements to the effect of, if he had a mobile then clearly he doesn’t need to be homeless.
This ignores the fact that if he’s homeless, he can’t have a landline. How would a potential employer contact him, if not via mobile? Maybe it’s the only way he keeps in contact with loved ones.
Being poor here intersects with being homeless and what people think is a privilege and what people consider necessity.
After the 2004 tsunami, heaps of donations came in to aid organisations, and were sent up to the region. I know someone who was working for an aid agency at the time, and some of the sea-tainers included whole shipments of high-heeled shoes and jumpers – for South-East Asia following a tsunami.
Okay, I don’t have an actual occurrence for this next one, it’s a hypothetical:
You go vegan, and you replace all of the animal products in your wardrobe. As an aside, I’m glad that you are in a financial and life position to do that.
You replace your wool jumpers with cotton and acrylic jumpers from Target. That’s totally cool, I love the House of Target! But do you know where your jumpers have actually come from? Have they come from a sweatshop? Even if it’s Australian-made, that’s no guarantee, we have sweatshops here.
So you’ve swapped an agonised animal for an agonised person. Is the item from overseas? What was the environmental impact of bringing that jumper to Australia, or harvesting that cotton?
More on intersectionality
Intersectionality is not about ranking oppressions.
Giving you these examples, I am in no way saying that you should prioritise any one of those things over any of the others.
I’m not saying the environmental issues around cotton should trump the animal rights issues around wool. I’m saying intersectionality is about considering everything.
And it’s not an excuse to say: ‘I’m never going to get it right so why should I try.”
I want you to try.
The rest of this presentation will look at intersectionality within animal rights. While there are many intersections, including sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, sizeism, xenophobia, cultural appropriation or colonialism, to name just a few, I’m going to focus specifically on racism and classism.
Why are we looking at intersectionality in animal rights?
Historically, in Western animal rights activism, it’s been considered a very white, middle-class movement. There’s an assumption of a certain level of education, and of physical ability.
People who don’t fall in to this image have felt unwelcome or alienated from animal rights because of this. A failure to take into account intersections can also be very disempowering for the marginalised group/s.
Traditionally it has been ‘How do we get X minority group to come to us?’ which ignores the reality that often these groups are already part of animal rights activsm, or doing their own thing, and the mainstream just hasn’t noticed them.
Or the approaches taken have ignored the reality of what’s going on, and so have squandered an opportunity to get a certain group on board.
A lot of intersectionality issues have been ignored or dismissed by western animal rights activists because “We don’t have time for that” or “It’s not about the animals.” The term I use for that is ‘single issue vegan,’ and it’s not a nice term.
Being single issue is giving preference to a political party based on their animal rights promises and ignoring their history of environmental and racial issues, never mind their history of breaking promises.
Being single issue is buying the cheap cotton jumper from some shop, without considering its environmental impact and their abuse of labour and sweatshop laws.
Being single issue is choosing something vegan with no consideration for whether it’s heavily processed and packaged, and what that means.
The reason why I talk about intersectionality in animal rights is because I have often felt alienated from it.
I am bisexual and ethnically Chinese, and I grew up economically not that well-off (though I am now a middle-class hipster).
I come to animal rights from environmentalism.
All of these things intersect for me, because what it means is that I deviate from the “norm” within animal rights. In animal rights, and also within veganism, terms that are frequently used, as they are in many movements, are things like ‘normal,’ and ‘exotic,’ and I’m usually positioned outside of these terms.
This has always been really alienating for me, because things that I think of as normal or everyday are actually considered odd, especially within vegan circles.
BI just wanted to flag this, because this is what intersectionality is about in animal rights: it’s about making sure that we’re not excluding, ignoring or dismissing people. And it can be about harnessing potential.
I could go on for hours, but I won’t: On racism
Here’s an example of racism within animal rights:
You may recall the Morrissey thing a few months ago. If you missed it, Morrissey, of The Smiths, said:
“Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare? Absolutely horrific. You can’t help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies.”
Generalising a whole ethnicity of people like that is racism. It just is. And comments like this are remarkably common in animal rights.
Unpacking Morrissey’s comment, here’s what you get:
- The assumption that the practice of animal cruelty within a country or a geographic boundary means that everyone of that ethnicity or culture does it.
- The refusal to check out your own back yard. I’m not saying that you can’t see what other people are doing and say they can’t do it. I’m saying, have you seen what happens here? It’s disgusting.
- It gives white non-vegans something else to stand on. Someone I used to work with, who is the sort of person who would go to a puppy farm rally, whose dog and cat are members of the family and go on holiday with her, and who is an unrepentant meat eater, said to me once just after we met, and before she knew I was Chinese: “God, it’s so disgusting what hypocrites the Chinese are. They pretend they love animals by having the cute panda as their national animal, but then they go and eat horses!” Comments and attitudes like Morrissey’s perpetuate and support this attitude.
- Statements like this perpetuate the stereotype that animal rights is only for white people.
- It alienates us. Morrissey makes that comment, and I’m like, ‘How many other people in animal rights think that about my culture? Well, fuck them, I’m not going to have anything to do with them.’
- It ignores the existing animal rights movement in China.
This is a really big obvious example of racism in animal rights, but sometimes it’s subtle too – a cultural cluelessness that still counts.
Racism in animal rights also makes it harder to connect with people, or make campaigns or arguments that fit with people.
Think of an ‘Easy ways to go vegan’ checklist, for example. What are some common things that might go on it?
‘Try substituting soymilk. Try out tofu. Eat veggie burgers instead of meat burgers.’
This advice is great, except it’s only relevant to a WASP audience. Do you know how hard it was for me to go vegan? It wasn’t. Before I went vegan, tofu and soy milk were already huge staples in my diet. I didn’t eat burgers and things that much, definitely not when I was a kid.
So this advice meant nothing to me, and I wondered what can vegans who are coming from different places to me have to offer me? And whether this is all they can offer.
When we in the animal rights movement assume a start from the same point – when we write our advice assuming that everyone is at the same place as us – we exclude and alienate people.
I don’t want to venture too much into vegan specifics since we’re talking about animal rights, but I’d like to briefly mention othering.
How many articles have you read in mainstream press about how vegan and vegetarian food takes a lot from exotic ethnic foods like, I don’t know, Indian or something?
If you say, for example, ethnic Indian food is naturally vegetarian, it ignores the conscious choice that people have made to be vegetarian. And using this sort of language in this way normalises othering.
This is more of an example of othering and is alienating. It assumes that it’s new for everyone, that the audience you’re writing for isn’t already in that group of people. It ignores that vegans are sometimes different from you.
Really super quickly: On classism
One of the things I really like about animal activism is the community ‘out and about’ elements. I love the rallies and protests, and things like going out to farm animal sanctuaries such as Edgar’s Mission.
And I love being able to back up my moral and ethical decision to do no harm to animals with the action of not doing any harm to animals. Daily this means being vegan, but I do it in other ways, too.
One of the things that out and about physical activism relies on, and even sometimes the activism of being vegan relies on, is a certain level of luxury.
I don’t mean boats and giant cars, though maybe you have that. I mean, you’re not a woman who works two jobs to make ends meet, so doesn’t have time to volunteer at the local sanctuary or to provide goodies for the vegan bake sale.
A lot of campaigns and discourse in animal activism relies on saying, ‘If you’re not doing this than you’re not good enough.’ One comment I heard recently was, ‘If you only go to the puppy rally then you’re not really trying.’
It doesn’t take into account that maybe some people only have time to go to one thing. They only have the money to go to one thing.
It gets like this with veganism too, sometimes. How can people eat that gross fast food? If we go back to the woman working two jobs to get by, maybe she doesn’t have time to cook. I went vegan when I was still living in Perth, and it was hard to get food that was vegan if it wasn’t specially prepared for me.
This is where the classism comes in to our movement, and the thing to take away from it is: sometimes there’s a reason why people can’t do things. Just because you can doesn’t mean that you get to disenfranchise her, or take away maybe the only decision she’s able to make.
A positive example of intersectionality taken into account in animal rights
I want to finish up with an example of something that I think was done well, and I want to point out how it could have gone poorly.
Every other article I’ve read about this was in fact written in a way that ignored intersectionality.
Following Hurricane Katrina, there were a number of pets that were abandoned. This was particularly horrible, as animals were left behind to drown or starve to death when their owners were floated off to safety.
Some of these articles looked at the culture of disposable pets, which is a perfectly valid reading, And many articles wrote about it in just this way. But looking at it this way ignores a lot of factors.
Author and animal rights activist Karen Dawn wrote a piece for the Washington Post in 2005 called ‘Best Friends Need Shelter, Too.’ In it, she talks about people who were ‘refusing to be evacuated simply because they [wouldn’t] “leave their pets.”’
She addresses the fact that shelter organisations such as the Red Cross have ‘no pets’ policies, and that this was primarily a problem for lower-income people who couldn’t afford to pay for their own evacuation.
She acknowledged that an animal rights issue (pets not being evacuated or effectively being discarded), had a direct correlation to another issue: the position of people of a lower class and lower incomes.
Here’s how she could have made the intersectionality even better: the article could have talked about the race issue. In New Orleans, many people of lower incomes are non-white. And there’s a correlation there.
Further reading: Go and educate yourself
I’d like to close out by recommending the following three websites as excellent starting points to read more about intersectionality as it pertains to animal rights activism:
Sistah Vegan – Breeze Harper
Animal rights and Anti-Oppression
The sites are about learning stuff. If you want to do stuff, that’s the first thing I recommend. Learn about it. And listen.
And, look, if someone, or a group – a marginalised group – comes up to you and says, “I saw your campaign / I read your petition / I heard what you have to say, this is why it hurt me,” don’t answer, “That wasn’t what I meant,” or, “That isn’t what I intended.”
Stephanie Lai is a professional hippy (working in environmental behaviour change and education), social justice blogger, and occasional science fiction writer based in Melbourne, Australia. Stephanie has a love of penguins, likes talking about the queer subtext in Gotham City, and vegan food, and her favourite colour is red.
You can find Stephanie reconciling her ethnicity and her veganism at Vegan About Town, talking about social justice issues at 天高皇企鹅远, and at her tumblr you can find an assortment of social justice and science fiction things.
This article is an edited version of Stephanie’s presentation at the 2010 Animal Activists Forum, organised by Animals Australia, 23-24 October at the Gold Coast, Queensland.
Image courtesy of Smiteme via Flickr, issued under a Creative Commons licence.
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written by Russell, 26 November 2010
Every person who is not a strict vegan must, ipso facto, believe that it is not wrong to unnecessarily harm an animal.
Unless you are happy with calling 99% of the public sociopaths, I suggest you think it over a bit! Sociopathy is irrelevant because nonhuman animals are not actors in human society.
Throwing your cat on the fire might bring you pleasure and personal value, but this value is not an environmental value nor an agreed cultural value. On the other hand, predation by a species that has evolved as a predator has environmental value.
As for "straw man" argument, I'm not following you. It's very straightforward. If you believe harming an animal is bad, and animals are harmed in nature all the time, and nature cannot function without doing this--- then, you must believe that nature is bad, or at least, a very prominent aspect of nature is bad.
That's fine. That doesn't invalidate your position. But it does make your position anti-ecological.
written by Niilo John Van Steinburg, 25 November 2010
You keep jumping to this straw-man argument with no logical basis. I see no point in addressing your huge oversights any further.
"Do I think it's wrong to unnecessarily harm an animal? Obviously not"
Wow, you are the first person I've ever met to state that they feel it is okay to unnecessarily harm an animal. If this is actually true, and you are not simply being contrary to support your indefensible position, then this puts you in the class of sociopath. Following your philosophy, it would not be wrong for me to throw one of my cats in a fire if I thought I'd get some enjoyment out of the process. I am relieved that I, and most people in the world, do not agree with you on this matter.
It is interesting, though, that you freely admit that to "eat meat, wear leather, ... hunt and ... fish" all involve unnecessary harm. That is the basis of veganism: that we should not cause unnecessary harm to others, and all use of non-human animals is both unnecessary and inherently harmful.
"Now, clearly the interests of the individual also have value, but they cannot be given greater weight than the ecological values without adopting an anti-ecological ethics."
Do you apply this principle to humans? Human overpopulation is one of the gravest threats to the environment. Following your logic, if one does not believe that humans must be culled to protect the environment, then that is "anti-ecological".
This will be my last message to you. I have no interest in debating with someone who does not converse in good-faith and also claims to follow sociopathic behaviour.
written by Russell, 25 November 2010
Assignment of inherent value of nature, its systems, processes and organisms is an explicit axiom from which environmental ethics flows. If you read J. Baird Callicott Holmes Rolston III, or even Paul Taylor (who values only organisms, not systems or processes) you will find they are quite open about this. Probably Singer and Regan would be, too... I will have to dust off my copies and refresh my memory but if I recall Singer begins by asserting that suffering has negative value (probably aping Bentham in so doing). And Regan, if I recall, begins with the assertion that all "subjects-of-a-life" have inherent value.
I use it not to "disprove" your own claims, but merely to contrast your own position with environmentalism. As I have already said, I doubt you would disagree with me on this point. I don't think you can disprove an ethical framework except by finding internal consistencies. Two sets of ethics can be self-consistent but conflicting simply by starting with different axioms.
As for animals existing in culture -- their presence in culture is only as an artifact, not as an actor.
written by Alex Melonas, 25 November 2010
Moreover, you have to presume the goodness of "nature" to support your contention that those who logically extend their principled criticism of the badness of causing harm and death to "nature." "Nature" has no inherent value, unless you can defend the contrary argument. That presumption is a logical fallacy. A fallacy you have never responded to.
"Nature" is neither good nor bad; it just is. Therefore, it follows that any presumption of the goodness of "nature" or ecosystems must necessarily include the corollary argument about how you are grounding that presumption. Accordingly, your "environmental ethics" are clearly fallacious. To merely by fiat exclude "nature" from ethics, proclaiming that it just is, begs the essential question. Seriously, if you still can't see this fallacy, you can't be helped.
written by Russell, 23 November 2010
If you attach negative value to a process that is a fundamental part of the functioning of natural ecosystems, then your position is anti-ecological. Very straightforward.
Do I think it's wrong to unnecessarily harm an animal? Obviously not -- I eat meat, wear leather, I hunt and I fish, and I made a conscious decision to do all of these things because I do not think they are morally wrong. As an environmentalist, I value predation, and I recognise that humans participate in ecosystems. Harm to an individual organism in an ecological context (such as predation) does not have negative value overall and so cannot be morally wrong.
Now, clearly the interests of the individual also have value, but they cannot be given greater weight than the ecological values without adopting an anti-ecological ethics. However, if the same ecological value can be derived two different ways and one also serves individual interests to a greater degree, then it should be preferred. So, if I can put meat on the table and obtain the satisfaction of authentic ecosystem participation while minimising the level of suffering of the prey animal, I will do so--this is why I pick my shots, I use enough gun, I practice Iki Jime when fishing, etc. (It is also why I purchase meat and eggs from free-range animals in preference to that produced with more intensive farming methods.) I could also avoid killing the animal but then I would eliminate the positive value of the encounter along with the negative.
written by Niilo John Van Steinburg, 23 November 2010
I'm interested in debating semantics with you, or the finer points of philosophy posited by people who are not truly animal rights advocates (and I don't know who Alex Melonas is).
However, for you to state that abolitionism is anti-ecological has no basis. Abolitionism is about not treating non-human animals like property or, in other words, leaving them the hell alone to live their lives as naturally as possible. How is that anti-ecological?
You skipped over my previous question. Do you think it is wrong to unnecessarily harm animals?
written by Russell, 22 November 2010
You can't refute something by just by denying it. Singer says "we may regret that this is the way the world is", in other words, we regret that predation exists, because we think it is bad.
If you don't like that quote then how about Alex Melonas on this very site. He has asserted numerous times that natural predation is bad. For example, here: http://www.thescavenger.net/an...62985.html
"causing harm and death is bad, generally, as a principle"
or more explicitly, on the same page
"because there isn't an intrinsic value to "nature" ("nature" is merely an "is", a claim I have defended ad nauseam to refute your assertion of “nature’s” self-evident value), if we could, if it were possible, to tinker, as it were, with "nature" so as to reduce the amount of harm and death caused, that would be a good thing, all things considered. So again, I am assigning negative value to harm and death, generally, as an impartial matter, and then reasoning to a conclusion. "
It starts out with an explicitly rejecting environmental values, and then goes on to conclude that harm and death have negative value.
As I said in my earlier post, to which you are replying, I don't think Alex would disagree with what I am saying in stating that the abolitionist position is anti-ecological. I wasn't trying to say anything controversial. If you think it is, maybe you need to look more deeply at the philosophical underpinnings of veganism.
written by Niilo John Van Steinburg, 22 November 2010
Russell, I have read that book, and your quoted passage does not support the statement you made earlier and I refuted.
By the way, Singer does not support rights for animals. He is incorrectly labelled the "father of the AR movement", mostly by the likes of PETA, who themselves are not truly an AR organization. Regan also has shown that he is speciesist with his actions in recent years - plus his argument for animal rights is flawed.
Do you think it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering to animals?
written by Russell, 22 November 2010
Nonhuman animals are not capable of considering the alternatives, or of reflecting morally on the rights and wrongs of killing for food; they just do it. We may regret that this is the way the world is, but it makes no sense to hold nonhuman animals morally responsible.
(emphasis added)
Singer's popular position conflicts with your own opposition to unnecessary harm. Singer is a consequentialist-- to him it is the consequences that matter, not the thoughts that led to them.
Tom Regan, like you, takes a deontological position, whereby animals are absolved of guilt for predation because they know not what they do. A number of authors have put forth fairly good arguments though that Regan's own arguments lead inexorably toward a duty to humans to interfere in natural predation, ergo Regan's position also devalues predation. See for example, this essay by Dale Jamieson: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2381001
As for your list of antisocial behaviours, when I am alone in the forest, yes I will defecate freely, defend myself against animal attack, copulate in the open given a willing partner, etc. As human beings we inhabit ecosystems and society. When in Rome... it is not quite as simple as that though, because as intelligent beings we are able to act in the interests of natural ecosystems in ways that other organisms cannot be expected to work out for themselves -- this is where eco-stewardship comes in. Neither ecological stewardship nor socialisation, though, ought to extricate us from nature or deny us our place as ecosystem participants.
written by Niilo John Van Steinburg, 22 November 2010
In my 10 years of vegan advocacy and animal rights activism, I've never once heard an advocate or anyone remotely familiar with the movement say this or anything like it.
Veganism is about one simple idea: that it is wrong for us to unnecessarily harm animals. Humans do not need to eat animals to live healthy, happy lives (in fact, there are a number of health benefits to a plant-based diet). Using and consuming animals involves inherent harm (from the common harm of general exploitation - that is, using another sentient being as a means to our ends - to the ultimate harm of killing them - which all animals in agriculture face). Therefor, if we truly want to live our belief that unnecessary harm is wrong, then we must go vegan.
Your attempt to confuse the issue by pointing to free-living animals has no impact on that simple belief. If you want to model yourself and your ethical stances upon free-living animals, then you might get in trouble when you freely engage in public defecation, public copulation, rape, violent defense of your personal space, etc.
So, leave the behaviour of non-human animals out of it. That has absolutely no bearing on how we should behave as humans.
- Niilo
written by Russell, 18 November 2010
I suspect you are probably willing to agree with that, so that will probably do for now, as far as that topic goes.
Secondly, you as "how do you decide what “natural” behaviors you accept as right and which ones are wrong?" Right and wrong are cultural constructs. Animals are of ecosystems, not of culture, so they are not subject to moral consideration. Humans are of nature and of culture. In dealing with nonhumans, we should act in concert with nature. In dealing with humans, we should act in concert with culture. The latter, not the former, is the domain of moral philosophy. That would be my take on on it, which I have recently learned is also how Rolston views things.
written by Alex Melonas, 18 November 2010
Your argument proceeds from the empirical assumption that veganism threatens the ecosystem. What evidence do you have for that position? To straw man the argument (i.e., how would I do if all nonhuman life on earth were to cease to exist) is just that: a straw man. Furthermore, egalitarianism follows from the principle of equal consideration of interests. Importantly, ecosystems do not have interests. The animals living therein, however, do. That is the relevant question Russell. So any conversation about egalitarianism and “natural systems” is theoretically and empirically unsound.
Finally, you are absolutely committed to the position that other actions that occur in “nature,” as it were, are equally open to your challenge here. Out-group aggression, sexual violence, and infanticide all occur in “nature.” If your moral argument is that veganism is wrong because it challenges our essential animal-ness then it logically follows that rape, for example, is right because it is in keeping with our essential animal-ness. By challenging this Russell, you are begging the question: How do you decide what “natural” behaviors you accept as right and which ones are wrong?
Going further, by parity of reasoning, any moral constraint by government is morally odious. We “naturally” hate and distrust people of different races, which manifests in horrible ways, and yet the government here intervenes. Is that wrong? Is it majority rule? Well, by that logic racism throughout history would be de facto morally right. And those first governments who challenged racism in the face of public opposition are de facto immoral.
written by Russell, 17 November 2010
Wake up and smell the roses. We are animals living in ecosystems first, and moral agents living in culture second. Our continued existence, and that of every species on earth, depends on the continuation of ecological processes. Given the threat nature faces at the current point in time, there is absolutely no place for anti-ecological value systems such as your own.
Of course it is your right to refuse to hold environmental values. At the same time you must realise that it's important to disclose this to those who you wish to influence, because they are likely to disagree with you on that point.
Secondly, you must surely at least have a seed of doubt in your mind about claiming egalitarianism is your support for passing negative judgement over the behaviour of a large proportion of Earth's organisms and the natural systems that have led to their very existence. Even with your ethic of non-interference, the value judgement is offensive and unegalitarian. Further, you make no bones about interference with Homo sapiens. Both the species-selectivity of that position and the decision to impose your will on the vast majority of our species, through the coercive force of government if needs be, could not be further from egalitarian if it tried.
written by Alex Melonas, 17 November 2010
As to the larger point in the essay, we have to be careful to distinguish practical, class and race issues from, say, the normative or theoretical grounding of "animal rights." Through the lens of practicality, veganism does seem to be associated with class and race privilege; however, as to theory, I think precisely the opposite is true. To wit, ethical veganism (for me) is a logical extension of an egalitarian challenge to oppression, which I take to mean the domination by a powerful group of a weaker group and all the ideological rationalizations posited by that powerful group to justify the oppression. This reasoning is inherently intersectional.
written by Russell, 17 November 2010
written by sam, 16 November 2010
written by JC, 16 November 2010
Aren't humans amazing? They kill wildlife - birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed.
Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer.
So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing and killing millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases.
Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals.
Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and once a year send out cards praying for "Peace on Earth."
~Revised Preface to Old MacDonald's Factory Farm by C. David Coates~
_____________
Anyone can break this cycle of violence! Everyone has the power to choose compassion! Please visit these websites to align your core values with life affirming choices: veganvideo.org & tryveg.com
written by Alex Melonas, 16 November 2010
So it clearly follows from your own reasoning that *humans* who have A) limited self-awareness and intelligence, a B) short life-span, and C) lack the cognitive ability to fear death have “some value, some worth,” but can justifiably be experimented on in biomedical research? Your argument clearly suggests this conclusion because the characteristics you’ve identified as important – presumably those that make humans human and therefore make humans morally matter – *do not* track along the species barrier.
So would you agree that we should use, say, mentally handicapped infants, or humans who have suffered severe brain traumas, in cancer research: use one to save 100?
written by Zahra Stardust, 16 November 2010
written by Katrina Fox, 16 November 2010
http://www.thescavenger.net/health/outdated-science-is-holding-back-medical-breakthroughs.html
Also this, which is an article I wrote based on his work (note the quote from the cancer council guy that we've been curing cancer in mice for decades, but look how well that's turned out for humans.
http://www.katrinafox.com/animalexp.htm
written by Mark, 16 November 2010
But that’s not to say that mice ARE humans. They are not. I’ll give a list of reasons why mice are not nearly as important as human beings:
1)Limited self-awareness and intelligence. No doubt, mice posses some self-awareness, but have you ever seen mice? They do the same thing, every day. They have no capacity to learn complex ideas or any capacity to reason outside the biological programming they were born with. They aren’t self-aware to the same degree as, say, a human is. Mice don’t have dreams, ideals, hopes or grave fears. Mice are stupid creatures, locked in a permanent routine of eating, sleeping, excreting, breeding, day in, day out. In fact, I’d say mice have very little personality, and probably do not have the ability to form a distinct, unique identity. Now, before you level this charge at human beings, I’d like to remind you that humans can strive, create, invent, dream and reason. On an intellectual level, and on a self-awareness level, we are far, far above mice.
2)Short life span. Mice only live 2-3 years. Humans, on the other hand, can live over a century. Why should we value the 2 or 3 years a mouse has, the 2 or 3 years of merely breeding and eating, over the 80-100 years a human has to invent, explore, imagine and love? A mouse’s life experience is so shallow when compared to what a human can accomplish. Thus, this is another reason for why a mouse’s life is irrelevant when compared to a human life.
3)No ability to fear its own death. A mouse in a laboratory cage, as long as it is kept relatively clean and spacious, does not feel any fear. Why would it? A mouse does not have the intellectual capacity, or the intellectual drive, to understand its predicament. It doesn’t understand what is happening to it or why, and, as long as humane killing procedures are used, it doesn’t even see it coming. For a mouse, being a laboratory isn’t stressful or frightening. In fact, a mouse in a lab probably has a more comfortable and lengthier life than mice living in the natural environment.
Animals are not people. They have some value, some worth. Obviously, they can feel pain, because they do posses neurons and nerves – but I strongly doubt animals such as mice have the capacity to comprehend their own life, their own destiny – what a mouse can accomplish, what a mouse can achieve, what a mouse can learn and what a mouse can experience, is so, so, so very shallow to the depth, majesty and beauty of what a human can experience. Mice cannot know nobility, love, friendship or hate. They cannot dream or ponder at the stars. They cannot strive for ideals, fight against despair, and yearn for glory. The life of a mouse is not heroic or majestic, and it’s not capable of being these things. Mice are so stupid, so base, and so animalistic, that a mouse will, quite frequently, eat its own young. What kind of worth do these creatures have? Little, precious little.
I am not advocating cruelty towards mice. Mice should not be tortured or made to suffer unnecessarily. After all, they can feel pain. But the pain a mouse feels, the sadness a mouse feels (indeed, if they are even capable of feeling sad, which is an emotion, I feel, quite beyond the capacity of a mouse). But they aren’t human. Give them the option of killing 1000 mice for 1 human life, and I would do it every damn time. Hell, 10,000 mice for one human life. Or even 1,000,000 mice for one human life – a human beings life is worth more than 10,000,000 mouse lives. I wouldn’t kill all mice for one human life – after all, the species of mice must continue as they are important for research and a vital part of the ecosystem. But the lives of millions of mice, lives of small dark spaces, crawling, mewling, futile efforts, crawling for scraps and mating with abandon, lives of short order and desperate struggle, lives of ignorance, lives of gnashing small teeth and claws and breeding in dark, damp holes – millions those lives aren’t even worth 1 human life. NOT EVEN ONE HUMAN LIFE.
If I have to kill 100 mice to do research into a cancer drug that saves 1000 human patients, I would do so with absolutely no guilt. We are human. We are the creators, the inventors, the dreamers, the thinks, the artists. We are on a completely different level than animals.
written by Russell, 16 November 2010
written by R. Ross Sélavy, 16 November 2010
And to say that a moral system (I prefer the term ethics myself) must be universally aplicable doesn't work I'm sorry. a Universal is impossible, and ethics come out of, and are constructed and developed in, their situational application. This is the very basis for your criticism of DFVB's comment. They are talking in universals (though you are too, falaciously expanding an ethic that by definition only binds human behaviour onto that of non-human animals).
Furthermore, I suggest you read up on ecology. Your statement that "natural ecosystems are fundamentally networks of ruthlessly competing interests" is plain wrong. Ecosystems work in balance, and the malority of larger species have complex social systems based on mutual cooperation - and this extends down to single cell organisms - have you heard of symbiosis? becuase it's going on both on and in your body right now. The compeditive "red in tooth and claw" model is a product of western late capitalism, a sytematic mis-reading of Darwin in order to justify colonial exploitation and the free-market model, and is just not observable in the real world.
written by Russell, 15 November 2010
If nonhuman animals had the mental ability to form such a conception and to make a choice based upon it, they would surely also have the ability to realise that if all animals made this choice there would be a sudden mass extinction event as one of the fundamental processes of natural ecosystems was shut down overnight. Only plants get their energy from the sun. Every other species feeds on the body parts of other organisms. To oppose this is to oppose nature itself. To disrespect it is to disrespect nature. A useful moral system is one which improves the collective lot when applied universally -- not one that causes widespread death and extinction by eliminating the very process that has driven adaptation, natural selection and biodiversity for hundreds of millions of years.
Whereas our ethical frameworks for humans imagine an ideal cooperative world, where the collective good is maximised by maximising indvidual goods, natural ecosystems are fundamentally networks of ruthlessly competing interests. Generally you cannot help one individual without harming others. Trying to help them all at the same time is an impossibility, and in fact will be counterproductive because predation is the major source of energy and of selection pressure for natural populations.
@DFVB, "Morality is not a choice. Some things are just wrong" -- how many queers have heard exactly those sentences uttered by homophobes pushing to retain anti-gay laws? Morality IS a choice. When people don't think through their values and just go with gut feelings, discrimination is what often eventuates. Whether that discriminates against a sexual orientation, an ethnic background or an entire species (Homo sapiens, the only species to be banned from its natural feeding behaviour under animal rights doctrine), it's all discrimination.
written by brandi, 15 November 2010
written by Mark Hawthorne, 15 November 2010
written by DVFB, 15 November 2010
written by adam, 15 November 2010
Anyway, y'all if y'all are interested in intersectional vegan theory, please check out my blog (and forgive me for the shameless self-promotion): http://eco-health.blogspot.com/
written by rohit, 15 November 2010
Animal rights is about extending the concept of compassion to all beings, human and animal, reducing hate, not creating more. Discrimination is antithetical to animal rights.
written by Treefinger, 15 November 2010
An action stops being a neutral choice when it harms others. Animal rights activists usually believe that eating meat harms animals, the same way a regular person would be against cannibalizing people without their consent. I know us humans are more sympathetic to each other than animals, and tend to see them as "inferior". But at least if you hold this view you could debate rationally instead of saying "OH THE WHOLE IDEA OF THIS IS SO CRAZY I WON'T EVEN DIGNIFY IT WITH A SENSIBLE ANSWER".
Coming from someone who still eats meat but is fucking irritated when people criticize animal rights people. If animals had even half the "choice" you're demanding for humans, they would not want to be killed and eaten en masse by other species. It's one of the few things we can pretty much assume about their motivations and desires even though we don't have a complex way of communicating with them.
written by Russell, 15 November 2010
Sorry guys, there's no getting around the fact that you are trying to force your belief system upon others, by threat of government sanction. Your message is: stop following your convictions and adopt ours, or the government will put you in prison. You can't get much more discriminatory than that. No amount of window dressing changes this fact.
written by Jo, 15 November 2010
But anyway, what I really wanted to say was that it was such a pleasure to be present in the room when Stephanie presented her research at the AAF. One of the most vigorous and involved discussions on AR I have been involved in. A+++
written by JustDucky, 14 November 2010
I wish you all the best, and thank you for this well written piece.
(PS - found this post linked from Racialicious - I'm glad it was!)
written by Jadey, 14 November 2010
I was horrified by that "subspecies" comment from Morrissey - it's hard to take someone seriously on animal rights who comments that a whole country/group of people are "less than" human. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
You wrote, "If you believe harming an animal is bad, and animals are harmed in nature all the time, and nature cannot function without doing this--- then, you must believe that nature is bad, or at least, a very prominent aspect of nature is bad."
That's the fallacy in your "argument." "Nature" is neither good nor bad. It just is. This conclusion is the necessary logical corollary of evolution by natural selection. It is from this premise that I *disprove* your so-called "environmental ethics." You, like all "land ethicists" proceed from an initial premise that is demonstrably refutable. Moreover, "land ethicists" belie their own arguments about human actors when they implicitly concede that (some) human beings are moral agents, which, by definition, means you cannot revert back to "nature" to justify an action. Your move to "culture" and the "social contract" concedes this point. Your "environmental ethics," then, besides being logically problematic, are neither here nor there. The open question is: What are your arguments against veganism, for example?
Furthermore, there are many, many human beings who are *not* actors in culture. By your standard, that is, these human beings are "artifacts" in culture, substantively playing the same role in culture as nonhuman non-actors. Indeed, it strains credulity to claim that dogs and cats, for example, are only artifacts in culture, or farmed animals whom we exploit as a foundation for much of society are only artifacts, while *all* human beings are actors. Culture is inseparable from the nonhuman animals that we exploit.