Animal Rights and the Indigenous Fixation

Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson released a paper on Nonhuman Animal rights and aboriginal rights this week which makes at least two important points. First, the Nonhuman Animal rights movement has tended to avoid indigenous speciesism for fear of coming off colonialist or racist. Second, activists should overcome this avoidance and meet aboriginal communities where values intersect. That is, instead of avoiding the matter, they recommend open dialogue to uncover shared interests.  They then proceed to dissect the various justifications given for the rights of indigenous communities to kill free-living animals.

The paper is an interesting thought experiment, but I fail to see the necessity in belaboring the point. Something like 99% of animal exploitation is related to industrialized killing, and yet many in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement remain fixated on how marginalized communities engage in speciesism. It is hard not to see this fixation as colonialist and racist given that it accounts for so little of the violence against other animals.

The focus on indigenous speciesism is a single-issue campaign of the worst kind. Single-issue campaigns are speciesist, confusing, and wasteful of resources. Instead of addressing the "forest" of speciesism, activists focus on the "trees" of particular forms of violence...and usually the "lowest hanging branches" of those trees. Because indigenous communities have a history of several centuries of domination and control, they make easy targets for animal groups. These communities are already politically weakened and the public eagerly adopts another reason to discriminate.

Violence against other animals is never acceptable, but I do think that single-issue campaigning against marginal cases is a waste of time. Comprehensive vegan education that addresses speciesism at the societal level is a much better use of resources and it is one that does not unfairly target disadvantaged groups.

Maori dissecting whale corpse that has washed ashore

In line with their recent publication Zoopolis, Kymlicka and Donaldson's premature theory seems to exist somewhere in the distant future in a world where anti-speciesist values are normative. Just as I don't think it's practical to begin thinking of other animals as citizens in a political community at this point in time (they may as well be arguing that we treat toasters as political citizens), neither do I think it is practical to fuel racism and extend the colonialist project by diverting precious few resources to attacking indigenous speciesism. For one, Nonhuman Animals are still considered property and non-persons, and secondly, the vast majority of animal exploitation takes place in agriculture (which is a white enterprise).

The wisest use of our resources would be to promote veganism and anti-speciesism. Part of this will entail recognizing the intersections of human and nonhuman oppression and Eurocentric romantic idealizations of native life that aggravate speciesism. But indigenous-identified persons who are building on this work are best suited to addressing the specific needs of indigenous communities, not white-led, white-centric non-profits that so often do the work of the state and have the capacity to aggravate discrimination.

How Non-Profitization Euthanizes Animal Activism

Euthanasia implies a "soft" killing, one that is not done maliciously, but takes life by surprise, so to speak, or without full awareness. In this manner, dogs and cats are killed by the millions each year under the premise that this is a rational strategy in the face of insurmountable speciesism.  But I don't think this is a species-specific phenomenon; I think it is endemic to advocacy spaces.  We have nurtured this ideology of unpleasant but necessary institutionalized death in the interests of other animals as a movement ethic.

The animal rights movement is being quietly killed behind the closed doors of non-profits.  Many advocates abhor the term "euthanasia," a euphemism that suggests dogs and cats are killed with mercy, when in fact they are usually healthy animals that are not so much victims of homelessness as they are of bureaucratic carelessness. But the bureaucracy of animal rights is killing more than dogs and cats; it's killing our movement.

Somewhere along the line, the great capitalist state has convinced social justice advocates that incorporating into the non-profit system will be a good thing. Not just a good thing, but the epitome of activism. As we are all indoctrinated with capitalist values, we look to non-profits as the natural progression in social movement mobilization. Becoming a non-profit means access to grant money, free postal service, tax exemption, and government support. But it also means an organization's ability to lobby is severely limited and they must make all of their operations transparent to state surveillance.

Another benefit to becoming a non-profit is the ability to make a living at social change. We have bought into the idea that we can make a living off of the immense suffering of other animals. We can pull a salary. Where did we get this fantastical idea that radical structural change can also pay our bills?  It should also come as no surprise that making a career out of social change is a privilege that is reserved mostly for well educated, well networked persons--usually white, straight, able-bodied men from Western nations.

In my opinion, non-profit incorporation is a death sentence. A group cannot hope to change oppressive social structures on one hand when, on the other hand, it relies on those oppressive social structures to remain in business. Becoming a non-profit necessitates a compromised message to keep conservative donors on board.  The state nurtures this system because it effectively stamps out the threat of serious social agitation. It also benefits from the cheap labor of non-profits that attend to social services the state has neglected in its catering to capitalist enterprise.

Non-profitization is killing us softly. As much as we love slick websites, glossy magazines, and salaries, these are detracting from the important grassroots work that is absolutely essential to real change. We cannot expect social change to pay the bills. In fact, disadvantaged communities have been doing social justice work for free for many decades. Social change is made by lawyers, teachers, business owners, service workers, factory workers, scientists, doctors, nurses, mothers, fathers, children, and even the unemployed...not by professional grant-writers. Grant-writers make money, not change.

HSUS pulled in $125 million in 2012

Non-profits, despite their title, are businesses. They raise money, they make money, the grow money, they employ staffs, and they are good for the economy. Vegan Outreach, for example, spent about 70% of their approximately one million dollars in intake for the 2011-2012 year on services unrelated to outreach. That's a lot of money going into other people's pockets. Considering that Vegan Outreach is one of the smaller animal rights organizations, it is staggering to imagine how many millions of dollars the animal rights movement is raising and spending on bureaucratic expenditures instead of putting it directly towards anti-speciesism work. Capitalism loves non-profits.

We need to step away from the misguided notion that more money=more change. The capitalist ethos of "more is better" and the fetishization of bureaucratic growth is what created the problem in the first place. Social change is hard work, but not everyone can expect to be compensated for it. It will take mass volunteerism. All skills must be welcomed and valued, not just the ability to write grants or donate money. Do not be led to the gas chamber that is the non-profit industrial complex.

PeTA Perpetuates the Sexual Politics of Meat and Classism in their Most Recent Pokémon Parody Game

By Stevie Lynne

PeTA released their latest Pokémon parody game, Pokémon Red White and Blue, in late 2013. PeTA have a very valid criticism of Pokémon in so far as Pokémon reflects and perhaps reinforces the speciesist idea that nonhuman animals are ours to use. However, there are a few things I wish to specifically focus on in their new parody, namely classism, sizeism and sexism.

Their latest parody game is loosely a sequel their earlier game Pokémon Black and Blue, a parody of versions Black and White. The aesthetic of PeTA's most recent parody game mirrors the first: all the scenes are dripping with obscene amounts of blood. PeTA's acceptance of and indeed over-top violence in this game warrants its own article.

The story in Red White and Blue follows newly liberated Pikachu, identified by the broken shackle around his neck, bandages, and a chunk missing from his ear. The game opens with a cow-like Pokémon, Milktank, being beaten up by McDonald's mascot, Hamburglar. Hamburglar has slipped through into the Pokémon universe to capture Pokémon to use in McDonalds products. Pikachu
steps in, defeats Hamburglar and saves Miltank. Pikachu and Miltank then follow Hamburglar back to the real world where they discover that McDonald's is using cute Pokémon toys to sell animal products to children. Together, they find various people who are involved in exploiting animals and use physical violence to overcome these “enemies”.

While I agree vaguely with PeTA's critique of McDonald's as a corporation using manipulative advertising to indoctrinate children, there are several elements of this game that are intensely problematic.

The “Fat” McDonald's Customer vs. the “Attractive” PeTA Protesters 

When the Pokémon first enter the “real world” they come across a McDonald's with a customer standing outside.

It's important to note that the McDonald's customer is portrayed as wearing ill-fitting clothes, is covered in food stains, and is also larger than the other characters depicted in the storyline. Here, PeTA are drawing on fat-shaming stereotype of larger people being slovenly and disgusting.

It's not as if PeTA aren't well known for being sizeist. Their 'Save the Whales' campaign remains one of their most offensive ideas to date.

To strengthen the association of the McDonald's customer being “gross”, after battling and defeating the McDonald's customer, the party encounters a group of PeTA protesters outside McDonald's. None of these figures has a similar body shape to the McDonald's customer. Jigglypuff even asks “Are you all so attractive?”

By inference, being larger, like the McDonald's customer is “not attractive”.

The Evil Slaughterhouse Workers – How PeTA Perpetuates Classism and Racism 

Part way through the game, one of the enemies the liberated Pokémon encounter are two slaughterhouse workers. They are characterised by menacing facial expressions, wearing white coats, and carrying meat cleavers. They are splattered with blood.

The portrayal of slaughterhouse workers as being an evil enemy of Pokémon and animal liberation reeks of classism. In the United States, slaughterhouse workers are predominately poor people of colour, an unknown percentage of whom are undocumented and as such have limited access to workers rights (Source: Food Empowerment Project).

In addition, slaughterhouses are environments which are psychologically damaging to people as well as being horrific for nonhuman animals. One study in the United States looking at 581 counties discovered that “slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries.”

In Australia, the Northern Territory has recently proposed a scheme for making prisoners work in a new abattoir opening up later this year, despite evidence that slaughterhouse work is psychologically damaging and leads to increased crime rates.

PeTA by setting up slaughterhouse workers as the enemy in this game clearly have no idea about ways in which structural oppression ensures that lower class, people of colour, undocumented migrants and even potentially prisoners, are forced to carry out psychologically traumatising work.

Slaughterhouse workers are not the enemy of the animal rights movement and it's ignorant to suggest that is the case.

Jigglypuff as Lettuce Lady and the Sexual Politics of Meat 

One of the battle moves PeTA has designed for Jigglypuff is “Lettuce Ladies”. This is most certainly not a move present in the original games. When you execute this move, Jigglypuff turns to the camera, suddenly holding two lettuce leaves as a “bra” over her chest before lashing out at the opponent.

In Carol J. Adam's seminal text, The Sexual Politics of Meat, she defines the sexual politics of meat as “an attitude and action that animalizes women and sexualizes and feminizes animals.”

PeTA have done exactly that with the character of Jigglypuff.

Here Jigglypuff is clearly sexualised, drawing on the common and ineffectual campaigning technique by PeTA of placing women out in public covered only by lettuce leaves. But here Jigglypuff is supposed to be “liberated”, but is instead being sexualised as feminized object.

This type of gendering of the oppressed non-human animals as feminine in imagery often appears in animal exploitation advertising. For example:

But the vegan movement is no stranger to sexualising and objectifying women.

As Corey Wrenn has written: “The vegan movement also favors the tactic of turning women into consumable objects in the exact same way that meat industries do.” She also notes why this is problematic from a systemic level: “Instead of empowering women on behalf of animals, these approaches could be disempowering women by preserving a patriarchal framework.”

In the Pokémon parody PeTA do to Jigglypuff what the meat industry does to the bodies of animals. Just like this image of a sexualised pig, PeTA are repeating similar structural oppression of nonhuman animals:

Photos from Carol J. Adams' blog.

Typical PeTA Tropes 

Critiquing Pokémon for its reflection and potential promotion of speciesist values is a valid undertaking. Critiquing McDonald's for using cute Pokémon toys to manipulate children is also a valid undertaking. However, PeTA's latest Pokémon parody replicates similar oppressive structures as found in some of their other campaigns – including, but not limited to: sizeism, classism, and sexism.

PeTA is sadly a broken record, continuing in their contributions to oppression while all the while being the most well-known “face” of the animal rights movement.

Stevie Lynne co-hosts Team Earthling Vegan Radio, a weekly Australian podcast.

How Animal Welfare Willfully Obscures Science

In her piece for The Huffington Post, "How Animal Welfare Advances Veganism and Animal Rights," Karen Dawn makes the strange argument that avoiding vegan advocacy will somehow promote veganism. Aside from the fact that this strategy has been in place for decades with the full support of multiple heavily funded organizations and has failed to work, I am especially concerned with the bad science that influential advocates are pulling on to substantiate their agendas.

Dawn presumes that an organization's tactics are devised by a skilled team of social psychologists, academics, and other researchers who are seeking the most effective method of persuasion. In actuality, decisions are made by a skilled team of well-paid grant-writers, accountants, and expert fundraisers. Organizations aren't hiring researchers, they're hiring people who know money. This is because animal rights, like any other corporatized social problem, is a business. If you want to be in the business of animal rights, you need to know how to be a skilled fundraiser...nobody is hiring social psychologists. This isn't about social change, this is about bureaucratic stability and growth.

Many advocates wrongly build their arguments on the faulty presumption that our large organizations have worked out the most persuasive and effective approach to challenging speciesism. The belief that big non-profits prioritize social change over fundraising leads many of us to uncritically accept some really strange positions. For instance, Dawn argues: "[ . . . ] softer campaigns get people to take that first step in the right direction." In other words, peddling happy meat (and, if we're lucky, vegetarianism) will lead people to become vegan.  Really? I'd like to see some evidence.

Research conducted by the meat industry itself has shown that increased concern about animal welfare has had no effect on consumption patterns. People are still eating animals because, 1) the animal rights movement isn't telling them there is any problem with doing so, and, 2) animal rights organizations put their stamp of approval on "happy" meat products.

Indeed, Tyson, Perdue, and other industries that profit from the exploitation of animals have been jumping on board.  Whole Foods, the epitomization of "soft campaigning,"  has been raking in millions of dollars thanks in no small part to animal welfare's sold out philosophy.

Dawn's argument is drawing on the social psychology of meeting people where they are: make people feel good about their present attitudes and behaviors and they will be more compliant. That's fair enough, but there is no evidence to support the censorship of veganism and the outright denigration of vegan principles by major organizations will do anything to move people towards veganism. Organizations aren't meeting people where they are in order to nudge them away from speciesism, they're meeting people where they are so as not to alienate potential check writers.

Reverse psychology only works on little children. "I bet you won't go vegan!" might get an obstinate five year old to trade in a McDonalds Happy Meal for soy nuggets and Silk milk, but censoring veganism from animal rights campaigning is not going to convince the public that veganism is achievable or ethically imperative. The animal rights industry's "soft stance" has nothing to do with effectiveness of persuasion and everything to do with insuring a constant donation flow from the conservative funders that keep them in business.

Misconstruing the science of social change with the science of exploiting people for money in the name of social change is really quite problematic. Animal welfare does little if anything to advance veganism. All it does is advance industry interests and make abolitionist advocacy that much more difficult for the rest of us. It is our job as a social movement to advocate for the society we want to see. If we want a vegan world, we have to advocate for veganism and nothing short of that. Some people will go vegan, others will not. Some will reduce their intake, some will start to think more critically. It is up to us to set the standards and start dismantling structures that impede behavior change. Meeting people where they are means taking seriously the barriers that prevent people from going vegan. This does not entail pretending veganism isn't important. Neither does it entail obscuring veganism with the hopes that some people will magically surmise how important veganism is.

Fat-Shaming, Sexism, and Other Horrors from the Tom Regan Archives

TRIGGER WARNING: Contains graphic depictions and descriptions of violence against women.
NOT SAFE FOR WORK: Contains sexually suggestive images and adult language.

Last November, I traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina to visit the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive at North Carolina State University. I'm conducting a content analysis of animal rights literature from the 1980s through today for my dissertation. While I was specifically looking for evidence of factionalism between professionalized non-profits and the marginalized radical groups, I couldn't help but take notice of some really problematic ads, articles, and tactics.  Enjoy these cringe-worthy finds from the Tom Regan vaults...

Professionalization

The exact moment when Compassion over Killing sold out. Earlier issues promoted radical activism and veganism. As CoK professionalized and became more dependent upon conservative funding, they switched to pricier glossy paper and vegetarian rhetoric.

Homeless-Shaming

Remember when PETA used to give away despoiled animal hair jackets to homeless persons? Far from altruistic, the intention was to damage the high status of "fur" by associating it with society's most undesirable and stigmatized. As you will see, PETA is pretty shameless when it comes to exploiting the vulnerability of marginalized groups for their gain.

Fat-Shaming

I can safely conclude that PETA has been promoting weight stigma for at least 20 years now. Thanks to PETA for their important public service announcement that undoubtedly spared thousands of fat people from spontaneous combustion.

I actually remember receiving this issue as a young kid, which is pretty sad. This is the last thing 13 year old girls need to be reading.

Weird. Someone want to explain to me how I gained 30 pounds in my 14 years as a vegan?

If I had a pair of these sweet 90s jeans, maybe I'd have some incentive!

Animalizing Women

The level of misogyny in this Friends of Animals advert is truly astonishing.

Because institutionalized violence against animals, pleather suits, and masturbation are a logical combination.

Animalizing groups to degrade and otherize them is kind of defeating the purpose, isn't it?

Some of the earliest "lettuce ladies." Presenting women as food maintains women as commodities and protects patriarchy. This ad is especially problematic because the African woman is presented as "wild mushrooms." African women are often stereotyped as "wild" and "animal-like."

Annoying and Unnecessary Sexualization

Ethics, health, saving the earth?  Nah, the most convincing case for veganism is combating impotence.

Oh here we go, a woman whose existence doesn't revolve around her sexual availability to men . . . 

No, nevermind, more fat-shaming!

Reverse Sexism

... doesn't exist. Notice in the rare cases men are showcased, it is comical and rarely "sexy." This is because 95% of subjects who are sexually objectified are women, so when the roles are reversed, it is seen as so out of the ordinary it becomes funny.

Animal rights: Fighting patriarchy with patriarchy...PETA sells penis power over animal ethics.

PETA's Misogynistic Obsession with Women Who Wear Animal Hair

...as though men don't wear shoes, jackets, belts, wallets, etc. made of cow's skin. We live in a patriarchy, so men don't make easy targets. Society already hates women and condones systemic violence against them, so anti-fur campaigns can cheaply cash in on misogyny.

Women are narcissistic and frivolous. 

Women are airheaded and ditzy. Here PETA awards a male reader for his astonishing skills in stereotyping women.

Violence Against Women

Here, PETA frames their misogynistic obsession with women as a "war," offering readers "ammo" and "combat tips." Remember, women are the primary persons wearing animal hair. Homicide is also one of the leading causes of death for women. Millions of women are also stalked, beaten, and assaulted every year.

Todd Oldham the misogynist reminds us, 'If you were a mink about to be vaginally electrocuted, you wouldn't think of anti-fur activists as bullies." 

PETA describes the ideal reaction to a woman alone in public wearing "fur":  have a man follow her and intimidate her. An excellent tactic in a misogynistic society where women are constantly harassed, bullied, beaten, maimed, raped, and killed by men. Tapping into misogyny is low-cost activism for an organization that doesn't understand  the meaning of social justice. Strange, I never saw any 'how-to's" for readers who come across men wearing jackets made of pig or cow skin.

Sexy Violence Against Women

PETA often draws on imagery of dead or maimed women to threaten women into compliance or to appeal to patriarchy. Most often, they are naked, nearly naked, wearing excessive makeup, or are otherwise posed in a sexual way. In a misogynistic society, sexualizing harm to women plays into familiar gender scripts that maintain male dominance and female subservience.

Women who wear "fur" risk fatal retribution.

Because human corpses are buried naked...and nothing is sexier than a young naked woman than a dead young naked woman.

The ultimate symbol of femininity merged with the ever popular imagery of bloodied women.

Compassion over Killing suggests women who wear animal hair should be killed and used as rugs.

Here a woman is animalized, sexualized, and brutalized. The message is supposed to be about ending animal abuse, but it draws on imagery of women being beaten into submission.

Again, associating sexualized women with death.

I don't think cowgirls are vegan...nor do I think they would be very effective at their job in Daisy Dukes and giant sun hats...

For anyone with a disability who would like text descriptions of the images, please feel free to email me at academicabolitionistvegan@gmail.com and I would be more than happy to accommodate you.