liberate your language
If you missed my last guest blog on Viva La Vegan, here it is!
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Through slang terms, idioms, insults, and standardized grammatical constructs, language reflects current social inequalities. It is packed with the vestiges of a culture’s history of domination, exploitation, and discrimination. In this way, language not only reflects inequality but also has the potential to oppress. In using problematic language, we reinscribe abuses and inequalities. However, by simply not using such language, we can free our own words of exploitation, forcing others to confront these issues when they hear us speak.
In this post I will focus on how language oppresses (and how we can liberate that language) as it applies to nonhuman animals and speciesist ideology. Importantly though, as I will describe below, it is impossible to discuss speciesist language without also discussing racist and sexist language, as they are all interlinked by a prevailing structure of inequality that operates within most institutions, belief systems, governments, and cultures globally.
Language oppresses in various ways. In relation to animals, the most notable ways that language reinforces and solidifies inequality is through pronouns, the use of “mass terms,” inaccurate language, derogatory terms/insults, and culturally specific idioms and adages.
pronouns. One of the most obvious ways that the English language oppresses is through the de-sexing and objectification of animals with pronouns. Many of you have seen the wonderful advertisements to promote veganism, which show an image of a “farm animal” with copy that reads: “Someone not something.” This distinction between subject (someone) and object (something) is extremely important for changing the way that people think of nonhuman animals. It is in the objectification of other animals that we deny them sentience and personhood so that we may use their bodies for sport, transportation, entertainment, clothing, food, work, or whatever else we humans please.
This transformation of other animals from subject to object, happens quietly through the use of pronouns. Animals are “it,” not “he” or “she;” they are “that” and “which,” not “who” or “whom.” Rendering an animal sexless, classifying him or her as “it that” rather than “s/he who” takes away a crucial aspect of the way in which the English language identifies (human) subjects.
Making the shift to “s/he” rather than “it” is simple but very powerful. If you don’t know someone’s gender, just do what authors do when talking abstractly about humans—switch back and forth between he and she. Never use “that” or “which,” always use “who” or “whom.” This is a very easy thing to do in your speaking and writing and for many animal advocates it will likely feel good and become natural rather quickly. More important than its being easy, it will be noticed. Sentences will just feel “off” to listeners, as this is technically not “correct.” Your spell-check will try to correct you and if you write professionally your editors will, too. But as you persist in speaking accurately about nonhuman animals, people will notice and be forced to confront the issue in their own thinking.
mass terms. This objectification of other animals via language also occurs through what Carol J. Adams identifies as “false mass terms.” This phrase refers to the lumping together of many individuals into one undifferentiated group (“mass terms”), thereby erasing individuality and establishing an inaccurate (“false”) sense that all in the group are one in the same. One way to think of it is as an extreme stereotype or profiling.
As Adams explains in her article A War on Compassion: “Mass terms refer to things like water or colors; no matter how much of it there is or what type of container it is in, water is still water…Objects referred to by mass terms have no individuality, no uniqueness, no specificity, no particularity.” This is a problem, because, “…humans make someone who is a unique being and therefore not the appropriate referent of a mass term into something that is the appropriate referent of a mass term” (emphasis added).
The way this works in regard to animals is through the identification of classes of animals and species of animals as if it stands in for any individual animal, and such that any individual animal stands in for the whole group. For example, by making someone a “farm animal” we classify her as a type of animal that can be killed for food. Further we often identify animals by species, as if all in that species are the same. This also allows for us to abuse animals en masse for the purposes of food and clothing. It also allows for policies to be set in place that are not in the best interests of some animals. If any cheetah is one in the same as the next cheetah, then trapping and caging some of them for “education” or conservation efforts in zoos becomes acceptable. If each cheetah matters, though, kidnapping any cheetah would be (rightfully) unacceptable.
We use false mass terms when we rely on inaccurate binaries as well. The most prevalent and harmful is human/animal. This is an us/them construct, which establishes a hierarchy that asserts that anyone not like “us” is not as valued. It is nonsensical since humans are also animals, but by establishing all nonhuman animals as “them”, it masks the fact that we are similar to them and they to us; in this way what we do to them can more easily leave our consciousness.
False mass terms are just another way we thing-ify living others, thereby linguistically masking their value as individual living beings. When we use simply “animal” in our language rather than “other animal” or “nonhuman animal” we fall into this trap. By seeking to identify the individual nature of other animals in our language, we better serve our cause.
insults. Derogatory phrases reflect those whom a society devalues (either in the past or present) and highlights racist, classist, abilist and speciesist ideology. Phrases like lame and cunt are insults, as such they devalue those whom they are associated with—people with differently abled bodies and women, respectively.
Animals and animal-related phrases are often used as well to establish the devaluation of others. It is here that we can see how racism, sexism and speciesism are intertwined. Throughout US history, there are two things in common about whichever ethnic minority is being blamed for social problems. First, is that people in this group will be the ones doing the most labor, the hardest labor, and receiving the least pay or legal protection. Currently, these roles in the US are filled by Mexican immigrants (and similar others, i.e. Latinos) as well as by nonhuman animals (who certainly do the most labor and receive nothing in the way of compensation, not even having their lives spared).
Second, there will be derogatory terms linking individuals in this group to animals. African slaves were kidnapped and brought to the US from the 1500’s to the 1800’s. They worked, were tortured, murdered, and raped—all without pay. They were likened to monkeys in images and language, literally being called “monkey.” In the mid 1800’s Chinese immigrants were recruited in the US to build the Central Pacific Railroad. As they built infrastructure for the development of the Western US and the realization of a “manifest destiny,” they were likened to rats. They were portrayed as rats on trading cards and in advertisements, and they were said to be “like rats”—which stood in for meaning they were dirty, untrustworthy, and unintelligent. Today, Latinos are working in the least desirable jobs and if they are “illegal aliens” they often have no legal protections and are paid inhumane wages. Latina women are said to “breed” like dogs or rabbits, other slang includes “border bunny” (referring to illegal border crossings), pollo (Spanish word for “chicken”, what the border patrol calls Mexicans at the border), and mule (refers to drug mules, insinuating Latinos are drug dealers), to name a few.
Epitaphs to degrade women by likening them to animals also abound: women are sexualized (and objectified) through being likened to nonhuman animals (e.g. chick, fox, vixen). Annoying women are bitches or they “henpeck” their husbands or “brood” over their children. Unattractive women are cows. As Joan Dunayer highlights: “Likening women to nonhuman animals undermines respect for women because nonhuman animals generally receive less respect—far less.” She goes on: “Viewed through speciesism a nonhuman animal acquires a negative image. When metaphor then imposes that image on women they share its negativity.” This use of metaphor that relies on the assumed inferiority of nonhuman others, works to both insult the human target and degrade the moral status of other animals.
When you start paying attention, you may be shocked at just how prevalent “animal” insults are. By refusing to use these terms, and being vocal about why you do it, you not only refuse to propagate these abuses, but you can actually subvert the dominant ideologies that support multiple inequalities.
idioms. Idioms are culturally specific expressions and adages are short memorable phrases. Both are used as shorthand to express a message, a lesson, or a moral. “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” “kill two birds with one stone,” and “don’t’ look a gift horse in the mouth,” are all examples. These phrases often play on a culture’s understanding of animals as inferior, as property, or as existing to be used or killed by humans. It can be difficult to stop using them as they slip out easily and have utility as they are typically understood by the majority of a culture.
Idioms are one of my favorite ways to liberate language because the listener will always take notice and a lot can be expressed through these shifts. For example, “Free two birds with one key” is just as descriptive as “Kill two birds with one stone,” and it totally reorients the expectation of who birds are (individuals to live free vs. objects that are acceptable kill). Because the phrase harkens to the original idiom, the listener will call that old idiom into question as they consider the alternative you have provided.
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau has an amazing podcast on this topic, if you want to hear more. At the end of this post is a list of some possible replacements for old idioms and adages from various sources, including many of my friends and the cookbook Vegan Vittles. If you are ever in a pinch, though, you can check out this very clever, “Randomly-Generated Animal Friendly Idiom Editor” by Chris Marcum.
inaccurate language. Inaccurate language is normalized in such a way that it, in turn, serves to normalize the animal abuse itself. Slaughtered individuals are rendered into “food” and described as delicious or expensive or over-cooked or salty instead of as kind orplayful or tired or clever. People wear the skins of others and call it “fashion.” People are said to “own” companion animals. We call those who were killed for food “meat.” A hamburger not a cow. When people eat chicken or fish, the language is still inaccurate as these words are being used as a mass term, much like “racing animal” or “circus animal.” We need to stop using inaccurate terms to define the world we are living in. People will tell you that you are alienating yourself if you say things like, “Do you sell any jackets that are not made with cow skin?” But who cares? Animal exploitation and abuse is so normal precisely because it is not questioned.
In talking about disadvantage, sociologist Michael Kimmel tells us that “privilege is invisible.” What he is referencing is the fact that a man is a man is a man, unless he is a poor man, or a black man or a gay man. All “inferior” identities are described. As Melanie Joy points out in her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, the same is true for vegetarians. She subverts this by labeling people who eat dead animals “carnists,” I borrow form Steve Best and call them necrovores.
When we label what we are seeing honestly we take the privilege of invisibility away. We re-center our own language to be compassionate, which calls out normalized cruelty to animals.
a daily practice. Every day language is used that plays off of the normalized nature of violence against animals. It is insidious but typically goes unnoted for the fact that it is so normal. Queering your lexicon means to deviate from what is expected or the normal in terms of the words you use to communicate. It is a beautiful personal act of daily resistance to animal exploitation. Liberating your language of animal abuse adds to the daily practice of veganism to establish a foundation of compassion from which advocacy and activism on behalf of other animals can begin.
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| Speciesist Idiom/ Proverb | Cruelty-free replacement |
Author |
| There’s more than one fish in the sea. | There’s more than one leaf on the tree. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Kill two birds with one stone. | Free two birds with one key. | vegina |
| Slice two carrots with one knife. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles | |
| Opening a can of worms. | Opening a can of spaghetti. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Land of milk and honey. | Land of sweet abundance. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Running around like a chicken with its head cut off. | Running around in circles. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| It’s raining cats and dogs. | It’s raining rice and beans. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| There’s no use crying over spilled milk. | It’s no use weeping over burned toast. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Don’t put the cart before the horse. | Don’t slice the bread before it’s baked. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. | Don’t put all your vegetables in one soup. | Megan Wagner |
| Never put all your berries in one bowl. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles | |
| Slippery as an eel. | Slippery as oil. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Packed in like sardines. | Packed in like pickles. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| On a wild goose chase. | Out chasing rainbows. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you’ll feed him for life. | Give a man a bean and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to garden and you’ll feed him for life. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| It’s no use beating a dead horse. | It’s no use watering a dead rose. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| He that would fish must not mind getting wet. | He that would garden must not mind getting soiled. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| One man’s meat is another man’s poison. | One man’s treat is another man’s trouble. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Talk turkey. | Speak vegan. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. | You can’t make granola out of gravel | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| There’s more than one way to skin a cat. | There’s more than one way to peel a potato. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| There’s more than one way to cook/fry a piece of tofu. | Alicia Pell | |
| There’s more than one way to catch a crook. | Rose Palmer | |
| There’s more than one way to fool a furrier. | Robyn Hicks | |
| You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. | You can’t make wine without crushing grapes. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Never fish in troubled waters. | Never fly a kite in a storm. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. | You can sow fertile seeds but you can’t make them sprout. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. | Don’t look for bugs in a flower bouquet. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. | You can catch more smiles with nice than nasty. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| You can’t get blood from a turnip. | You can’t get water from a stone. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| You can’t sell the cow and have the milk too. | You can’t sell the orchard and keep the apples too. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Ants in your pants. | Pepper in your pants. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. | Don’t count your bushels before they are reaped. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Don’t count your beans before they sprout | Jovian Parry | |
| Walking on eggshells. | Walking on broken glass. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| You are no spring chicken. | You are no spring onion. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Neither fish nor foul. | Neither greens nor grains. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Don’t let the cat out of the bag. | Keep it under your hat. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| He who steals a calf steals a cow. | He who crushes an acorn kills an oak. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. | A berry in the hand is worth two in the bush. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Kill not the goose that lays the golden eggs. | Don’t fell the tree that yields the sweetest fruit. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. | Sauce for the peach is sauce for the plum. | Joanne Stepaniak in Vegan Vittles |
| A wolf in sheep’s clothing. | Dahmer in a nice suit | ? |
| Bringing home the bacon. | Bringing home the Benjamins | Ryan Bethencourt |
| Get to the meat of the issue. | Get to the core of the issue. | Rose Palmer |
| If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. | If you lie down with bankers, you get up with no heart. | Robyn Hicks |
activism in haikus
This weekend I was invited to share a story about activism as part of a fundraiser for the Open the Cages Tour. (Please, feel free to donate—you will support an important documentary, Maximum Tolerated Dose, and help bring some important demos to many US primate research centers).
I decided that a story about activism should be a collective story, as activism is collective in nature, so I treated it like organizing a protest. I came up with the parameters for the project and I asked people to join. I decided on a haiku, as it forces big ideas into concise spaces. A haiku consists of 17 syllables, broken up into three lines. It goes like this:
A haiku has five
syllables, then seven,
then another five.
I asked for one last minute when I was panicked wouldn’t get the others on time (which I did), and hers came in too late for me to add it. So we will warm up with that one and then you can read the piece preformed at the fundraiser. Please see the footnotes for author names and links to the amazing organizations of which they are a part.
One of the most awesome parts of the night was when I met Matt Gauck and saw his tattoo in homage to the haiku.
Activism
Inspiring changes.
What is the most effective?
Those that come from love.[1]
OH…and then there is the awesome Haiku that got lost in the shuffle and didn’t get put in because I messed up!
Raw nerves set against
The pound of domination.
Must “be like water”[1.5]
Part 1: The Challenge
To do: Open cages,
open records. Liberate
slave bodies and minds.[2]
Liberate beagles
from the depths of hell, expose
vivisection fraud[3]
your coat is bullshit
animals are not fabric
don’t make me get up[4]
killing a mouse made
your breath fresher than ever!
why would that bug me?[4]
why yes I do like
animals better than you
any more questions bro[4]
Part 2: The Solution
It is quite simple;
animals should fly and run,
set free as can be.[5]
will to live in tact,
the knowledge in their sad eyes
animals are us[6]
I speak out for them
They hurt, feel, love just like me
Their freedom is mine[7]
Fifty five billion
The number is so large when
I am only one[8]
Twenty-six thousand
The number of chickens killed
Writing this haiku[8]
Our hearts are heavy
We have chosen to see it
Must love each other[8]
Broken hearts renewed
When symbolism turns to
Concrete resistance[9]
Part 3: The Solution
Can writing books be,
enough to make people change?
misplaced my body…[10]
Facebook: friend or foe?
We love it, the feds troll it
Be smart about posts[11]
Megaphones, matches,
new laws, research, protest, bricks.
Support all the tools[12]
we have many tools
but prison is all they have
to use against us[13]
Those enslaved count on
your voice and actions. We must
organize and fight![14]
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[1] Leigh Chantel, Viva La Vegan↩
[1.5] Dylan Powell, The Vegan Police↩
[2] Ryan Shapiro, GourmetCruelty.com and Massachusetts Institute of Technology↩
[3] Gary Smith, The Thinking Vegan↩
[4] Jennai Bundock, Weak.Lungs/Big.Heartbeat↩
[5] Amanda Schemkes, Action for Animals↩
[6] Jasmin Singer, Our Hen House↩
[8] Vasile Stanescu, Rodopi, Critical Animal Studies Book Series↩
[9]Gary Serignese, South Florida Smash HLS↩
[14]Ghazal Tajalli, South Florida Smash HLS↩
don’t stop with the fall guy, blame his boss too
On March 11th, 2012, U.S. army sergeant Robert Bales made headlines when he went on a killing spree in Kandahr, Afghanistan, killing 17 civilians. In another infamous military tragedy, military personnel working at Abu Ghraib routinely abused, tortured, raped, humiliated, and assaulted prisoners. Once exposed, 11 soldiers had charges brought against them, and a few were sentenced to some jail time. Earlier this year, six Butterball employees and one state agriculture official were arrested on charges of animal cruelty for abusing turkeys in factory farms. Preceding this, in September 2010, Billy Joe Gregg, Jr. received an eight-month prison sentence for savagely beating and torturing cows on Conklin Dairy Farm.
Billy Joe Gregg, Jr. received only an 8-month sentence for heinous acts of abuse against cows
What all of these cases have in common is that a select few abusers took the fall for failed and violent institutions. Unfortunately, their punishments appeased most people, leaving a satisfaction that justice was somehow served or is being served. However, in letting these people take the fall and bear the burden of the guilt, a number of truths are masked and the violence is allowed to continue.
making the ordinary appear extraordinary
These prosecutions distract from the fact that these sorts of actions are normal within these institutions. It is the job of the military to systematically terrorize and kill others. Soldiers must learn to view the subjects of US imperialism as “enemies” and to deindividualize them. In seeing each individual as one and the same, it becomes feasible to kill them. That is what all armed conflict does, it strips the personhood from individuals and makes them a collective enemy so they can be detained, controlled, defeated, and killed. It makes sense that some people, trained to enact violence on others, cannot switch back and forth between when, where, how, and against who it is okay to use violence or to kill.
The cases discussed here were only addressed with symbolic reprimand because they could not be hidden from the public. They were punished not for what they did but for the fact the public found out about it. Rather than changing these institutions to prevent such atrocities, great lengths have been taken to prevent other public exposures. Whistle blowers such as Bradley Manning are punished for sharing military abuses publicly. Ag gag bills are popping up around the country, attempting to make it illegal to conduct undercover investigations on farms. (It was undercover investigations that exposed Conklin and Butterball).
Robert Bales, his trial has not yet commenced for the brutal murder of 17 Afghan civilians
The punishments doled out are tokens intended to appease and pacify us, while thousands of others are paid with or subsidized by our tax dollars to enact similar abuses on a daily basis, leaving billions tortured and murdered every year. Every time you pay your taxes, you pay for the tortured cows at Conklin, the prisoners held without charges and violently abused at Abu Ghraib, the millions of baby boy chickens thrown into grinders at meat packing plants, the environmental degradation of meat production, the murder and starvation of innocent civilians worldwide, and the list goes on. We pay taxes to maintain our privilege but our privilege comes with the exploitation, torture, and murder of others. And the people charged in the above-mentioned cases, are the people we pay to do this since we cannot bear to do it ourselves or to collectively do what it would really take to make it stop. When Abu Ghraib happens or Conklin Dairy Farm footage is released, we are forced to confront ourselves, and what is happening without our consent, but on our behalf. It is all too easy to accept the punishment of a few workers as a resolution to these problems. But these people are acting normally, within their circumstance.
Gregg was expected to subdue and move animals who weigh hundreds more pounds than he does. When they lie down he cannot move them. If he cannot move them he cannot get paid. His actions are unforgiveable, unexcuseable, unacceptable. However, given his constraints—the violent system in which he is entrenched, the fact that he kills hundreds of innocent beings on a normal day at work—his actions are not surprising. The system must be changed. To change the system, we need to keep our focus on the big picture and not be pacified with his prosecution. The supervisors who let him take the blame, the owners who profit off of mass murder in the first place, and the government who takes our tax dollars to subsidize this horrific industry—these too are the ones who need the be blamed.
Lynndie England only received a 3 year sentence for her role in the humiliation, abuse, and torture at Abu Ghraib
While a few token Butterball employees took the fall for the abuses animals regularly and normally face in the factory farming system, the higher up the chain of command the less blame a person had. While some workers were fired, the government official who tipped the plant off as to when inspections would occur (allowing for these abuses to go unmonitored) received little more than a slap on the wrist (two weeks suspension from work, a year of probation). Then, in a laughable twist, Butterball was actually rewarded for a safe working environment shortly after when five awards for worker safety were handed out by the American Meat Industry. The chickens and turkeys in Butterball plants are the true proletariat, the real working class. In this context, a safety award for protecting workers is beyond laughable.
the villain is a victim
In our fervor to punish these abusers, we also forget that they are victims. In their punishment, their victimhood is erased; further masking the system that instigates these violent acts and benefits the powerful few at the expense of the majority.
Most of these people ended up in their jobs as a result of their disadvantage. (Not all of course—Bales used to be a stockbroker, though being sent on four wartime tours did, arguably, make him a victim). This landed them in these positions to start, and made them particularly vulnerable to the control of their employers and the system that fostered their violence. The US military targets young kids with few opportunities and positions the military as a way out of their neighborhoods, financial worries, and other struggles. It becomes a viable option for steady employment, travel, and education possibilities for those who grow up in circumstances where they are disadvantaged by their families, income, a bad neighborhood, inadequate schools, or mistakes made in their youth. Rich kids are simply less likely to become combat soldiers, or factory farm workers for that matter.
The combat soldier and factory farm worker are at the bottom rung in their industry. They do the hardest, most dangerous, and most violent work—and they take the least pay. They must victimize others for their paycheck, and that can (and should) make a person crazy. They are monsters for what they did, but they alone are not to blame; we can’t forget that or it will never stop.
the fall-guy
The few who are punished serve as the fall guys to protect those who profit and benefit from these actions. The term scapegoat refers historically to animals who were literally cast out of cities and towns to symbolically carry the sins of the townspeople away. Fall guys are not as innocent as these scapegoats; unlike the scapegoat they did in fact commit horrific vicious unforgiveable acts. However, like the scapegoat, they are straddled with the burdens of others, who will be absolved of their responsibility as soon the fall guy is prosecuted. That is, unless we demand more than the prosecution of these few individuals.
If you train and pay someone to be a murder, she will be a murderer. If you monetarily reward someone based on his ability to conquer and kill others you will by necessity have someone who embraces violence and murder and who might strive to excel at it. Expecting these lessons to be enacted only when “the boss” says so is asking too much, particularly when there is often no logical justification for or discernable pattern to when and where the boundaries are, beyond the financial interests of a select few in power. “The boss” needs to be held accountable as well. In our hatred of these abusers our sights hone in on the fall guy, the most powerless among the abusers. We focus only on the ones who wielded the sword, not who gave them the weapon, trained them to use it, and placed them into psychologically traumatizing situations.
On another day, Bales might have received a medal for slaughtering human beings. Gree and the Butterball workers probably saw their superiors or coworkers viciously torturing animals as they did. I am not denying that these people have agency, that they are culpable for their violence, that they should not have done what they did, but I am calling attention to the fact that they did these things within systems where their actions were normalized and at times rewarded. We need to attack the system as well as the abuser.
All the abusers mentioned here deserve to be punished. And they deserve to be punished more harshly than they were. But that is just one screw loose in dismantling the machine of violence and oppression that these industries really are. The punished workers are expendable, unskilled, and replaceable to those in charge. Other workers have filled their place already and some are likely acting as they did. The machine will keep running. We need to remember that these injustices will continue to happen unless we start holding those in power—the ones who get to sit behind a desk and send others to do their killing—are held accountable and punished.
People profit off of a system where lives are rendered into objects, physically and ideologically. Lines are drawn between human and non-human, US-citizen and foreigners. We have constructed the boundaries of nationhood and species as if they are boundaries to our moral and ethical limits of care. However, they only exist to preserve systems of power and capital gain via institutions premised on violence and the success of the few at the expense of many. This system only works if the less privileged masses stay pacified blaming each other for the crimes of the powerful and never demanding that the real villains, the ones who drive this insanity but assume no risk, are held accountable.
the risk is real: anti-choice policy and personhood ammendments
A couple weeks ago marked the 39th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. This Supreme Court ruling gave women in the US the ability to have legal abortion, within limits. As many celebrate the anniversary of this landmark court case decision the religious right and political conservatives are in the middle of an assault on women’s bodies, trying to strip away our rights to and control over our health, our bodies and our families.
What seems to be misunderstood by some, particularly in my cohort and younger, is that the Roe v. Wade does not mean women have a legal right to an abortion, specifically. Roe v. Wade is a legal precedent about how to interpret the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution regarding due process and the right to privacy between a woman and her doctor. Further, because it is a Supreme Court ruling, it is long and detailed and involves a lot of language that might become challenging in the future. For example, the ruling limits abortion to embryos/ fetuses that aren’t “viable”—as technology advances the very language in Roe v. Wade could make it obsolete as a protection for women’s right to choose how to control their fertility.
the risk is real
A number of liberals I have spoken to do not acknowledge or actively combat (though maybe it is just that they can’t truly fathom), that this is a real and urgent issue. There is a true attempt to criminalize abortion and other types of fertility control. It has gone under the radar to some degree because those running for office who promote such policies (ahem…the republican presidential hopefuls) are not talking about moral issues; they are talking about job creation and the economy. They keep scrutiny off of the moral and social control they want to impose on the bodies and in the lives of women and other minorities by keeping the focus on the economy.
In a recent article, Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, highlights data from the Gutmacher Institute that underscore how drastic our situation is:
“[I]n 2011, state legislatures passed more than triple the number of anti-women’s health provisions than in 2010 — the highest ever. Twenty-four states enacted 92 new abortion restrictions last year, shattering the previous record of 34 adopted in 2005.”
Women my age have always had a right to privacy with their doctor, which feels like—and has been misconstrued as—the right to be able to choose having an abortion. When I discuss abortion with pro-choice people my age, instead of the discussion being about securing this right for all women, in the long-run, conversations are often about the decisions people would make in their personal lives. But, while the personal is political, the individual may not always be. Our sights need to turn back toward the bigger picture. We need to get out of our arm chairs and put on our riot gear because our rights, our liberty, our health, our wombs, our families, and our freedom are at risk. This is a real risk and this is an urgent matter.
inequality and mother-blaming
Woman in the US are living in a culture that already disadvantages women, especially mothers. Our society does not adequately support women financially, medically, psychologically, or socially—much less pregnant women, and especially not mothers. Financially, women are at a disadvantage in this society. Women make less money for the same work as men. The price of motherhood is even greater, with mothers incurring an average 3% wage penalty per year of absence for maternity leave or childrearing.
Even so, women are also expected to be the primary caregiver. A deadbeat dad might seem crappy, but he is not the type of villain that any woman who is not a perfect mother becomes. Women who do become mothers are often held to culturally impossible standards. Among the socially advantaged, mothers who work may be vilified as abandoning their children. At the same time, if a woman chooses not to work to be more available for her children she is seen as lazy, a social welfare pariah—unless, of course, she is independently wealthy or finds a partner to support her, stays home to rear her children, and is completely fulfilled (but not overly consumed) by this role. There is really no winning. Add to that the financial, emotional, and physical burden of pregnancy and motherhood. We treat these as personal issues so that those in power can refrain from providing social or fiscal support for childbearing. At the same time, our society judges women for their choices in their personal lives should they not be perfect pregnant women or perfect mothers.
It is in this context that women are expected to want to have children, even in situations when a pregnancy is unintended, unwanted, or unhealthy. We cannot force motherhood and childbearing if as a culture we don’t adequately support children or mothers.
anti-choice goals are anti-woman (and they also happen to lead to increased abortion rates)
Anti-choice goals are particularly insulting in light of the fact criminalizing abortion does not actually save lives or reduce abortion rates—if successful it will certainly kill more women and increase abortion rates. A reduction of abortion rates and women’s safety during abortions are tied to abortion being legal and accessible and women having access to and proper knowledge of contraception. As Susan A. Cohen of the Guttmacher Institute explains, abortion rates do not decrease when abortion in criminalized—criminalizing abortion just increases the rates of unsafe abortions. Rather, it decreases when contraceptives are used:
“[I]t is not the changes in abortion’s legal status that can explain the decreased abortion rate worldwide, since many more countries liberalized access to abortion than restricted it. Significantly, though, during this same period, contraceptive use worldwide increased and unintended pregnancy rates fell. Where contraceptive use increased the most, abortion rates dropped the most… Where contraceptive use is high, abortion can be legal and widely available, and still relatively rare. The lowest abortion rates in the world can be found in western and northern Europe, where abortion has been legal for decades but access to contraception is widespread.”
The anti-choice goal of criminalizing abortion results in more abortions and many women being forced into medical, familial, economic, and interpersonal situations that can be dangerous and even deadly. Promoting abortion restrictions is laughably unstrategic from the anti-choice perspective; it is not a way to help women, zygotes or fetuses.
Pro-choice activists are not “pro-abortion.” We would rather see sexual health education, access to birth control, and other health and family planning measures made available to preempt unwanted pregnancy in cases when women have a priori control. The only thing we currently have going for us is the hope that in the new insurance plan developed under the current administration, insured women should be able to get the birth control pill. However, anti-choice advocates and many of the conservatives currently in or vying for political power would also like to see even these choices outlawed.
personhood for who?
In an attempt to control the bodies and sexual activity of women, a number of conservative politicians are now pushing for Personhood Amendments. Personhood laws grant fertilized eggs personhood. In at least 22 states personhood proponents are working on some sort of effort to put a personhood amendment up to debate. These amendments highlight how immediate and aggressive the anti-choice threat really is.
Mississippi’s failed personhood amendment reads:
“Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Mississippi: SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of the state of Mississippi is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.” This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for implementation.”
Personhood is being defined in such a way that the personhood of women is placed second to the personhood of a zygote. This could make it illegal to even use the birth control pill. No, I’m not joking. It failed in Mississippi, one of the stronger attempts for the amendment, but it did not fail by enough to feel comforted—just over half (55%) voted against the amendment. That means almost half of all voters either supported or simply did not care if a zygote—regardless of whether it is viable or not—has more rights than a person.
Personhood amendments define woman’s bodies as tools that can be regulated, subordinate to the potential life of a fetus. Under these laws, women can be legally liable for any injury to that fetus. In a culture of misogyny and mother-blaming, this is likely to open the floodgate to the persecution and prosecution of women who miscarry. That this regressive idea is even being entertained and put on the political agenda should be ringing the alarm bells—we need to acknowledge that these are attempts at regressive sex-based laws and take the threat seriously.
Many proposed definitions of personhood identify insemination as the start of “biological life.” This could arguably make some of the safest, most effect forms of birth control illegal because the pill and other hormonal birth controls do not prevent insemination, just the implantation of an egg into the uterus walls. I suspect that this is part of the plan, at least for the more insidious among anti-choice advocates; it’s a clear attempt to chip away at sexual choice and reinscribe outdated and sexist moral codes that tie women to sexual contact only in the confines of marriage and with the expectation of motherhood. Essentially, women are being told that if they want to have sex, they should be prepared to be mothers.
Personhood is currently up for a vote in the Oklahoma Senate and some Democratic senators highlighted its absurdity and sexist nature by placing men in the same position of blame and control as women. One senator wrote a bill making the sperm contributor financially liable for the resultant child. Another, Constance Johnson, added language making masturbation and other sex acts not intended to procreate illegal. The amendment she proposed states, “[A]ny action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.” She says she did this because “The Personhood bill would potentially allow governmental intrusion into families’ personal lives by policing what happens to a woman’s eggs without any similar thought to what happens to a man’s sperm. My amendment seeks to draw attention to the absurdity, duplicity and lack of balance inherent in the policies of this state in regard to women.”
As previously discussed, women’s lives are saved and abortion rates decline when abortion is legal, there is access to trained abortion providers, and contraception is widely available. If personhood advocates could step away from their confused moral and religious dogmatism and sexist ideologies of control over women’s bodies and actually look at the real world data, they would need to acknowledge that the call for a personhood amendment is antithetical to their goals; particularly as it could criminalize access to contraception, the best preventative measure for unwanted pregnancy.
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What pro-choice activists are fighting for is women’s right to control their own bodies, their own health and their own families. We are against a government, particularly one that is Eurocentric, male dominated, and organized and maintained by economically and socially advantaged people, having control of the bodies and choices of all women in their reproductive years. We cannot afford to wait until our rights are stripped from us and our persecution begins; we need to fight this now because it is real and it is happening.
relating to oppression and taking a stand
Thanksgiving is my vegan fuel. In fact, my first post on this blog was in relation to this day. My first post encouraged simply abstaining from the event but this year I have decided the right way to celebrate Thanksgiving is by fasting. The thought process that got me here began with a news segment when I was about 13 years old and is encouraged by the current occupation of spaces around this country, which exemplify the oppression of the many by the few. The short story is that I plan to fast rather than feast this Thanksgiving. For the long story, keep reading…
Empathy through Relating
Thanksgiving has taught me the importance of relational understandings of the world and the role that personal experiences can have to connect us to experiences of others. Relational understanding provides a foundation for empathy; through relating one’s own experiences to that of the “other” some sort of understanding and caring can begin to happen.
In the case of animal rights, philosophers such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan have made great arguments for moral philosophies that encompass nonhuman animals. There are also stacks of data showing that animal rights ideology is logical—eating meat will kill us, drinking pasteurized milk increases risk of osteoporosis, farming practices are torturous, leather and fur production is environmentally irresponsible, animal testing has never cured cancer and is not a good model to test the hazards of substances. I think this is all great; we need rational justifications that systematically torturing and murdering animals, trapping them for entertainment purposes, killing them for sport, raising and slaughtering them to wear their skins, or eating their flesh until we are diseased is wrong.
However, rational, empirical facts are not enough. Recent books by psychologists Melanie Joy and Hal Herzog both show that we are a schizophrenic society. We do illogical things to animals and in relation to animals. For example, we kill some cows for leather, and then we kill different cows for meat, but we don’t kill cats or dogs at all (in Western cultures anyway). Most silently allow our country to spend money on wars that lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people, at the same time that they fervently believe in pacifism. People get into a frenzy over protecting small numbers of dolphins and whales and even encourage government money to be spent on the issue. However, few ever question that over 97% of all animals used in research studies—rats, mice, and birds, for example—are not technically classified as animals at all by the federal government and so are not protected by any animal cruelty laws in that setting. These inconsistencies are not based in reason.
Our culture has a twisted circle of compassion that is not logical or rational and is so entrenched that the illogic is not even discernable to most. We need more than logic to explain these problems to people; we need people to feel empathy. Our own feelings are something we know to be true. If we can use that knowledge to generate empathy and relate to the experiences of others, we can connect in a deeper way.
Thanksgiving as Relationally Transformative
For me, Thanksgiving has been a holiday that has served as a conduit for relational understandings of oppression. I was about 13 years old when I saw a news segment in which people were using frozen turkeys in lieu of bowling balls for some sort of holiday lawn bowling competition. Something about the light-hearted nature of the segment and that this was the news cast’s “feel good” segment disturbed me. I never ate another turkey. I wasn’t introspective or comfortable enough with myself at that time to fully investigate my feelings or to even understand why I acted on them, I just did. It took another decade before I embraced veganism, slowly eschewing various practices of species, gender, race and class domination along the way.
Looking back at that “turkey decision” now, I remember that I was studying the Holocaust at the time. I was in a program in high school that required me to conduct a self-directed, year long research project. That year I chose the Holocaust. It was for personal reasons, as my father and his family are all Jewish. My grandfather immigrated to escape the pogroms in Russia; my father was born in 1935 and went through postsecondary education at a time when there were quotas to keep Jews out of schools. Marked by the sense of fear that this history stirred inside of me, I traversed the Holocaust by taking my video camera to survivors and asking them to tell me their stories. I was deeply disturbed by the events of the Holocaust and moved by the survivors I met.
I remember the connection I felt between the Holocaust and Thanksgiving; I believe I even verbalized it once or twice at the time, though it is easier to understand now than it was then. What struck me about the turkeys being used as bowling balls was that their deaths were purposeless and I could finally understand that because I understood what had happened to the Jews in the Holocaust was unnecessary and I had deeply felt emotions about it. I didn’t complete the logic for many years–that all murder, be it for sustenance or desire or domination, is unnecessary and senseless–but in my personal understanding of the needless, systematic, mass slaughter of ‘my own people’ I related to the needless, systematic, mass slaughter of turkeys at Thanksgiving time.
Some people reject the parallel of the Holocaust to animal slaughter, but for me it was in that space that I came to understand animal suffering. As I have discussed before, relational understanding through sexual assault has also helped me connect to the experiences of factory farmed animals. But in regard to Thanksgiving, specifically, there have been other beliefs and feeling and experiences I had that over the years have rubbed up against the violence of the holiday. The insanity of this holiday has allowed me, over time, to see, acknowledge, and deplore oppression in our society, even where it has been normalized and even when it doesn’t directly affect me.
When I learned the truth of the deception of the Plymouth settlers I felt personally deceived by the education system. That feeling then allowed me to connect to and better empathize with the more serious deception and betrayal that European colonizers and those of us of their ancestry have enacted on all indigenous and non-white people in this country. It made me better understand the futility of national boundaries and state-generated wars, as well as the bullshit behind political “concessions” to minority groups who shouldn’t need to be fighting for equal rights in the first place. Though my own experiences and feelings do not parallel those of others, they have allowed me to find empathy. I can acknowledge the plight of others, whose shoes I have the privilege of not walking in, and to acknowledge that their injustice exists.
Relating Inorder to Reject Thanksgiving
I despise the US thanksgiving tradition and each year I am disturbed to watch the majority of people in my communities, often myself included, engage in the practice just because it is tradition, rather than taking a political and social stance not to engage in this ostentatious celebration of inequality and oppression.
There are so many connections that I wish others would make through their own understandings and experiences of the world. I want the Occupiers to acknowledge that, in the big picture, nonhuman animals and the earth are the 99%. I want their experience of the minority oppressing the majority to help them build empathy for the animals slaughtered on this day. I want people who have experienced racism to use that experience to build empathy for those who were tricked, exploited, and betrayed by the colonizers and to reject this holiday as it is a symbolic celebration of oppression. I want women to recognize that the factory farming of animals disproportionately targets female-bodied individuals. In their understanding of what it feels like to live in a society that is generally unsafe and unfair to women (e.g. 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted by the time they reach their mid 20’s, women still do the majority of housework, women make less than men for the same jobs), I want women to build empathy for the turkeys at the dinner’s centerpiece and all the animals who were beat or raped or otherwise tortured and killed for milk and butter and eggs and the other meat on the table.
Most years on Thanksgiving I try to simply ignore what is happening, or I show up to a vegan potluck and call it “Thanksliving” to feel better about my compliance. But this year, I want to use it to create new experiences that might help me relate better to the world around me. All experiences can be transformatively relational if you are open to it, and this year I will try to be. I have spent years trying to pretend like this holiday has no meaning, but it is bursting with meaning. For me, Thanksgiving exemplifies the intersections of so many oppressions. In honor of and in solidarity with all of those who have been killed, starved, abused, exploited, and neglected as a result of the “bounty” of my country, I will not feast this Thanksgiving but I will fast instead. I know it is just symbolic and it will not create change, but I do know that for those with privilege, the consumption of food is a political act. We have the privilege to choose what we eat, and that is why I am vegan.
On Thursday I will fast to protest and reject murder for the sake of gluttony, the subjugation of the disadvantaged by the privileged, and bounty for few at the expense of many.
dilemma: doing it all vs. doing one thing well
Several years ago I made a decision to be a committed activist. The problem? I care about a lot of social issues. In the end, I decided that since other animals have the fewest voices speaking up for them and, cumulatively, the greatest numbers of individuals suffer the most abuse, that that is where I would focus my activist energy. Plus, it was my entre into the animal rights world that made me truly understand the necessity and immediacy of activism.
I made a choice to be focused on one cause, because of the belief that energy focused mainly on one movement would be more effective than scattered energy. So, though I occasionally work with other campaigns for various causes, I keep most of my energies in animal rights. As Mississippi pushes a personhood amendment, occupiers take their cities over, Food Not Bombs hits the dumpsters and the streets, and many other necessary actions are taken to fight the normalized oppression in our society, I want to be there. But I have come to terms with not being there because of my perception (accurate or not) that there are more people engaged with those issues than there are with animal rights issues.
Though I decided to choose only one topic of activism for my main focus, I have not chosen only one tactic or even one avenue ofanimal rights work. I have tried to play two hands at once and do both in-the-streets activism and academic activism simultaneously. Not only that, but within each of those realms I try to do multiple things. Behind the computer screen I am working at an animal protection organization and researching and publishing outside of work as well. In the streets I organize a campaign which involves everything from keeping up a website to going to protests. I also actively support a number of campaigns and I am at anywhere from one to three protests a week. I belong to an animal rights organization as an active member who volunteers and attends meetings and I meet other obligations for this group and other activists. Oh yeah, and I give money each month until I am living on my credit card debt.
I am busy and I am seriously multitasking. But what strikes me the most is that, among activists, my story is in no way unique. I think of my activist community and I can readily think of others in my position. For example, one woman I know is amazing at fostering and re-homing cats and she is a dedicated activist. She works as much as she can at her job to financially care for and find homes for cats, volunteers at a cat rescue, and takes cats to adoption events. At the same time, she is an activist and regularly attends protests and other outreach events. From the outside looking in at her I see the struggles she faces. She needs to work to afford all the cat food and litter and medical emergencies, but she arranges work shifts around the week’s protest schedule, even if it means she makes less money.
My friend usually tells me she is handling it all just fine. I thought I was handling my balancing act well too, until my body revolted. As I was in the last couple months of graduate school, I showed up at a protest I had organized. Half way into the protest, my body broke out in hives. I knew I had to be writing my dissertation, but I knew I had to be at this protest as well, and the clash was simply too much. It was the second time in my life and the second time that month I had broken out in hives.
This physical protest staged by my body forced me to think about what I was doing. And what I was doing was too much. The more I thought I also realized that not only was I doing too much but that my distracted attention kept me from doing anything particularly well. I decided that I would be more focused. But, of course, nothing has come of this.
Why? Because choosing to excel at something, when it means abandoning something else, is a high stakes game when it comes to activism and animal rights. I know that my education provides me a platform others don’t have. The letters I put before and after my name mean that people let me give talks and publish my papers and if I play it right I can get animal issues taken seriously in research and academia. At the same time, I will do what so few other vegans will—I will get out into the streets and raise my voice. I will look at the toolbox of tactics and use less popular tactics such as protesting in a regular, strategic manner, and not just on Fur Free Fridays.
I can clearly see where I am useful in each realm, and I can clearly see the benefits each might have for animals (of course we need many tactics working together simultaneously to create change). So, how do I choose one over the other? How would my friend described earlier choose between only fostering or only doing activism? How would you choose between any two of the things you do on a regular basis to help animals?
Maybe the answer is not to choose. I know that is what I have been doing but, for me, it is not working. At work I feel guilty that I am not running my campaign. When I am doing that I worry I should be trying to get my writing out. When I write I am distracted because I could be working or at a protest. I am everywhere doing lots of things but I am never really “there” and I always feel that I should be doing more. I feel like a bad academic, and uncommitted worker, and a slacktivist even though I am dedicating most of my day to proactively trying to help assuage the ideas and behaviors that allow animals to suffer and die en mass every single second of every single day.
And while I hope this is some strange affliction or issue that only I have, I know it is not. This movement is run by a small, dedicated group of people who, protest, blockade, petition, speak up and speak out with every ounce of energy and second of time we have. There is activist folklore and myriad examples of the dreaded “burnout,” but I wonder, if I choose to do just one thing,and to do it well, maybe I can avoid that. And let me be very clear, by choosing one thing I don’t mean a total rejection of anything else. Anyone can make it to one or two protests every week, no matter what else they are doing. I could always keep up this blog even if my main focus was on running a campaign. What I am talking about is choosing only one avenue of activism/ animal rights work to focus on, and having only one major project within that realm.
I spoke to another researcher recently who is actively focused on animal rights. I am impressed by the level of energy and time he is investing in collecting and analyzing data for a particular project. When I told him that he said some thing to the effect of, “this doesn’t seem like much, I used to be an organizer.” It really drove home for me the amount of work each of these things takes and the way one’s thoughts must border on obsession to come up with the type of innovative ideas that actually drive change. But to become consumed, enveloped, obsessed by an issue, one must be free of other agendas.
I can see the beauty in dealing with only one issue at a time. The problem is, that if I do choose one focus, no matter what path I take I can’t imagine that I will ever feel good about the path I chose not to take. That is an unfortunate side effect of being willing to acknowledge suffering—once you acknowledge it you can’t ignore it. And even if our struggle to right the wrongs of our species seems hopeless, we are ethically bound to at least try. In a movement where the actions that each of us takes is just a tiny drop in a huge bucket of what needs to get done, it is difficult to judge our impact. It will take millions more like us to achieve our goals, and so there will likely never be proof in our lifetime that we have taken the “right” path, the one that will save the most lives. [1]
In the end it is clear that I am doing a lot of things, but I am doing none of them well enough. I can recognize that, but what I can’t do is decide what to better and what to leave behind.
Footnotes:
[1] The only clear exception to this I see is fostering, adopting and doing sanctuary work for animals or freeing individual animals from situations of abuse. The people who do this are definitely having a profound immediate impact. However, for those of us focused on longer-term goals or cultural or institutional shifts, there is little to direct us.
I recently had the privilege of putting together a pamphlet with Nicoal Renee Sheen of Band of Mercy. I want to share the text we produced, as it wraps up a lot of the issues touched on in this blog.
Nicoal and I will be having an informal panel discussion on this topic at the Animal Rights 2011 Conference in Los Angeles this Friday, July 22nd, at 10pm. If you will be at the conference please stop by. We have not been assigned a room yet, but if you are at the AR2011 conference stop by the Band of Mercy table and we will tell you where it is. (If you want information on how to format this for a pamphlet, let me know.)
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by Nicoal Renee Sheen and vegina
For every life, demand liberation.
Animal liberation will only come with total liberation. Until there is total liberation we will live in a world of inequality, where those in power will seek out ways to confine and control the masses. Sexism, racism, ageism, ablism, heterosexism and nationalism, or any other form of systematic inequality, must always be rejected. For any inequality is a roadblock if we are to have true liberation. We must make community organizers, feminists, anti-racists, anarchists, and anyone working for social justice our comrades. We cannot use their oppressions as a tool to forward our own goals. We must acknowledge that total liberation will only come if we absolutely believe in liberation for everyone; even when that means giving up some of our own advantage and comfort.
Interconnections of Oppressions. All oppressions are rooted in a single system that privileges capitalism, masculinity, individualism, and whiteness over all else. Under this system everyone who is considered “less than” is subject to exploitation and domination. Those labeled as less than or expendable, e.g. non-human animals, people of color, women, are viewed as objects rather than full beings with their own interests or emotions. After someone is deemed inferior, oppressors are able to commit violence against them with ease. The exploitation of different groups is intertwined and at times mutually dependent. Here are just a few of the ways that oppressions are interconnected and reinforced:
Slaughterhouses. In 2009, over 9,000,000,000 land animals were murdered in U.S. Slaughterhouses, making it the most dangerous industry for animals in this country. It is also one of the worst places for human workers, who tend to be immigrant and/ or ethnic and racial minorities. Many workers immigrate with false promises of citizenship from company recruiters, the conditions in slaughterhouses lead to a high risk of food contamination and the human workers, who work without unionization or healthcare benefits, are in great danger on a daily basis. In 2005 the Human Rights Watch issued a statement identifying meat-packing plants the most dangerous factory job in the U.S. Women are also at particular risk, as rates of violent and sexual crimes is higher in communities with slaughterhouses.
Control of reproduction. Rape is a tool used systematically by men and the broader society to control and manipulate female bodies. Animal exploitation is carried out through the rape of animals, where reproduction is exploited for profit. All female cows on a dairy farm will be raped and her children taken and enslaved so humans can drink her milk. One in three women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Society assumes that both female chickens and women are made to reproduce for another’s purposes. Female chickens are induced with hormones to create the unnatural surplus of eggs for human consumption. Women are expected to repopulate for the needs of capitalism i.e. laborers and consumers.
Language. When individuals are devalued through language their abuse and exploitation is more difficult to notice and easier to justify. Language often times is used to diminish people of color, women and animals. Women are often degraded through name-calling that equates them to animals. For example, by using words like “bitch” and “chick.” Racism has often been justified by equating racial and ethnic minorities to animals. Chinese were compared to rats in 19th century popular culture, Latinas are currently called “breeders,” and the list goes on. Such language degrades women, minorities and animals at the same time.
Animals are often referred to as objects (“it” instead of he or she) or groups (flocks, herds), rather than as individuals. This renders their individual qualities invisible, making their exploitation and murder easier. This is the same way that slaves and native populations were referred to and that immigrants, particularly undocumented migrants, are still spoken about today.
A shifting line. The line between who has rights and who doesn’t has shifted. Throughout history, different groups of people and animals have been included or excluded depending on what they are considered “good for” according to the dominant class.
We value pet animals but devalue food animals, even though all these animals have the same ability to feel emotion and physical pain as we do. Native populations experienced genocide when Europeans migrated to this continent, black Africans were classified as animals to justify slavery, and the U.S. government has changed immigration policies to meet the needs of American capitalism, allowing different groups of people entrance or citizenship as they meet our needs for labor. Such oppression remains today and must be eliminated.
We can’t free the animals if we oppress others. It is often difficult to acknowledge or understand the way that oppressions are interconnected since each type of exploitation is historically and contextually different. But we must remember, there is one overarching system that privileges only a select few. This works by placing arbitrary boundaries between those who have power and rights and those who don’t. These lines are established to ensure that only the ruling class maintains power and the oppressed remain divided.
When we oppress others, we reinforce the same system we actively fight against. When we fight among social movements for whose oppression matters most, we do the work of the oppressor and keep ourselves as distinct, separate groups. Instead, we need to join together and fight injustice at its roots.
