Poverty of Ambition in the Context of Social Change.

Social change is happening but social change is slow.

This social fact may not particularly comfort us when we think of the thousands of nonhuman individuals who are killed every second but, nevertheless, it does represent the reality of the situation we face as animal advocates in deeply speciesist societies.

In this podcast, I discuss the apparent 'need' we have to clearly see positive change before our eyes but I suggest this may lead us to make the wrong advocacy choices.  Who are we to do that, since we are not the ones in 'farms,' in laboratories, and such like?  Also, on this point, I argue that we should distinguish between psychological requirements of animal advocates and economic ones of animal advocacy organisations.

I suggest the a useful mindset to adopt is one that recognises that we are pioneers of a recent idea, an idea that is just making its first impacts on 'the social': in other words, the vegan-based animal rights movement is new.

Since there are always complaints when the above point is made, let me clarify what I mean. The mass social movement that is informed by animal rights philosophy and which has veganism as its unequivocal moral baseline is a recent social phenemonon.  If you respond to such a claim by thinking of Peter Singer and Animal Liberation and PeTA and the like, then that is not animal rights in the sense that Singer is not a rightist and his books and the organisations that base their advocacy on his position do not reflect animal rights thinking.

These may be "close enough" for some, and I'm sure many animal advocates feel that, but it remains the case that this advocacy is not rights-based as it is grounded in a philosophy that rejects moral rights as the basis of an argument about human-nonhuman relations, and in advocacy that often willingly overrides human animal rights, especially women's rights, to make its point.


LISTEN | MP3 | 28 minutes | English.

Easygoing Speciesism.

Much has been written here in Ireland about the recent kidnap, ordeal and suffering of GOAL Ireland worker, Sharon Commins.  GOAL, an aid agency, describes itself as dedicated to the "the alleviation of suffering amongst the poorest of the poor."  It says that it's aim is to protect the most vulnerable's "fundamental needs and rights of life."

The return of Dubliner Sharon Commins, after 100 days in captivity in Sudan and subject to several "mock executions," has been headline news throughout Ireland, not least her craving from day seven of capture to eat "eggs Benedict" - a dish consisting of an English muffin, "ham," a poached egg and an egg-based sauce.

Apart from thinking that this thing seems designed to bring on an instant heart attack, I was struck by the irony of the news reports of Commins' suffering mixed with the laughter about her craving.  Even more hilarious, it seems, Agatha Commins, Sharon's mother, wasn't able to make eggs Benedict very well.

Of course it should be made clear that only animal advocates reading blogs such as this one will even recognise that there is an irony here, since the pig from which the "ham" was extracted was executed and the hen who "supplied" the eggs has likely endured far more than 100 days in captivity and is probably still confined - and will for sure be executed later too.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly in terms of the disconnect here, many people who are not animal advocates would be appalled that I am making these points in the first place; that is how easygoing the institution of speciesism treats the lives and deaths of billions of nonhuman individuals.

Vegan Education On Public Forums.

Many animal advocates seem to resist posting on public internet forums because they argue that debate tends to degenerate into name calling and a kind of stalemate between parties.

My view on this is to accept that many people, apparently informed by a number of countermovement organisations, pop up on any forum on which human-nonhuman relations are discussed, and they often try to close down adult discussion, or to ridicule the issues with inane comments and "jokes," or just post their endless collections of pictures of "hamburgers," flesh and dead animals.  Any discourse on consuming animal products will result in declarations that contributors are now so hungry that they must "go and eat a (rare) steak" etc., etc.

Some delight in suggesting that they regularly wear t-shirts bearing legends such as, "for every animal you don't eat, I will eat three."  I often wonder if the same individuals appear on human rights or environmental fora to announce, "for every child you do not abuse, I will abuse three," or "for every gallon of water you conserve, I will waste three."

While all these apparently negative aspects of posting on public forums are true, I feel that it is important to remember that many people seem to read these exchanges without actually taking part in them.  It is for them that contributing to public internet debates is important.  A post making this very point appeared on an Irish politics forum this very morning.

I think you guys will just have to accept [name] won't concede any point ever, no matter how obvious and definite. It's best to just present the information which refutes what he's saying and leave the rest for the reader.

If you get a chance to say something on human-nonhuman relations on a forum, or in the comments section after a media piece, remember you are doing it "for the reader."

As for name calling, leave that to others, then readers can make up their minds about forum contributors.

Dehumanisation Processes. Podcast Number 5 (part two).

This is the second part of podcast 5 on processes of dehumanisation.  In the podcast, I discuss war, pornography and sexism in the playground.

WARNING: Some listeners may be upset by some of the language in this podcast which expresses sexualised violence against women.

LISTEN | MP3 | 32 minutes | English


Podcast 5 bibliography.

Barker, P. (1992) 'Maintaining Male Power', in C. Itzin, ed.
Bauman, Z. (1988) 'Sociology after the Holocaust', The British Journal of Sociology, Vol 14(4): 469-97.
Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust, Oxford: Polity.
Benton, T. (1993) Natural Relations: Ecology, Animal Rights and Social Justice, London: Verso.
Berger, P.L. (1979) Facing Up to Modernity: Excursions in Society, Politics, and Religion, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Birke, L. (1994) Feminism, Animals and Science: The Naming of the Shrew, Buckingham, Phil.: Open University Press.
Bourke, J. (2000) An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare, London: Granta.
Clark, S. R. L. (1991) 'Animals', in J. O. Urmson and J. Ree (eds). The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, London and New York: Routledge.
Conlon, G. (1990) Proved Innocent, London: Penguin.
Duffy, M. (1984) Men and Beasts: An Animal Rights Handbook, London: Paladin.
Dworkin, A. (1981) Pornography, London: The Women’s Press.
Eisnitz, G.A. (1997) Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry, New York: Prometheus Books.
Forna, A. (1992) 'Pornography and Racism: Sexualising oppression and inciting hatred', in C. Itzin (ed).
Gordon, D.M. (1976) 'Class and the economics of crime', in W.J. Chambliss and M. Mankoff, Whose Law? What Order?, New York: Wiley.
Groves, J.M. (1995) 'Learning to feel: the neglected sociology of social movements', The Sociological Review, 43, 435-61.
Itzin, C. (ed) (1992) Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties. A Radical View, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MacKinnon, C.A. (1992) 'Pornography, civil rights and speech', in C. Itzin, ed.
Mayall, A. and Russell, D. E. H. (1993) 'Racism in Pornography', in D. E. H. Russell (ed.), Making Violence Sexy: Feminist Views on Pornography, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Mestrovic, S. (1994) The Balkanization of the West, London: Routledge.
Regan, T. (2001) Defending Animal Rights, Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Reynoldson, F. (1991) Propaganda, Hove, East Sussex: Wayland.
Robbins, J. (1987) Diet For A New America, Walpole, NH: Stillpoint.
Robins, K. (1994) 'Forces of consumption: from the symbolic to the psychotic', Media, Culture and Society, 16: 449-68.
Ruesch, H. (1979) Slaughter of the Innocent, London: Futura.
Sharpe, S. (1994) Just Like a Girl, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Tester, K. (1997) Moral Culture, London: Sage.
Thomas, K. (1983) Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800, London: Allen Lane.
Ulrich, R.E. (1991) 'Animal Rights, Animal Wrongs and the Question of Balance', Psychological Science, Vol 2(3), May: 197-201.
Warren, K.J. and Cheney, J. (1991) 'Ecological feminism and ecosystem ecology', Hypatia, 6: 179-97.

Some of the relevant footnotes in the chapter.

It is difficult to find definitions relating to words about animals that do not contain pejorative meanings. For example, according to the 1999 (tenth edition) Concise Oxford Dictionary, one meaning of 'animal' is 'a very cruel, violent or savage person,' while 'animality' has the arguably positive definition: 'behaviour or nature characteristic of animals' with the utterly negative addition: 'especially in being physical and instinctive.' As we shall discover, these meanings have particular import when associated with pornographic representations.

'I am a baby Aryan, not Jewish or sectarian. I have no plans to marry an ape or Rastafarian.' A 'ditty' holocaust denier David Irving taught to his daughter (Anti Nazi League 2000: 11).

Calley talked about how the military defined and understood 'enemy' (in Tester 1997: 87): 'They didn't give it a race, they didn't give it a sex, they didn't give it an age.' In common with much talk about animals other than 'pets,' 'thing-like' status is emphasised with the word 'it.'

The assumption of the potency in dehumanising training appears to have registered at least with one North American jury. In 1977, a US veteran was accused of raping and murdering a Vietnamese woman. His counsel told the jury that the ex-Marine was highly trained: trained to kill such women as the victim in the case, thus 'what's so difficult about doing this again...kill one more Vietnamese girl?' The defendant was acquitted because it was judged that he could not sufficiently see the wrongfulness of his act, leading Jacqueline Lawson to write a paper entitled, 'She's a Pretty Woman...For a Gook' (see Bourke 1999: 354-55, 495).

According to Bourke (1999: 153-54), the British Army experimented in 'hate-training' in 1941 and 1942. Apart from having to run while a loudspeaker chanted 'Kill the Hun. Kill the Hun.' part of the 'training' involved recruits being sprayed with sheep's blood and being taken to animal slaughterhouses.
The notion of the 'logic of domination' has proved to be controversial in ecological philosophy, with writers criticising and defending its conceptual validity. The first articulation of a logic of domination I am aware of appears in Marcuse's One Dimensional Man, first published in 1964.

Some feminist writers do not seem to share this perspective. For example, White (1993: 106) in a chapter entitled, 'Pornography and Pride,' apparently does not see women characterised as animals as harmful due to men seeing both as exploitable but because she is offended that men make the comparison and 'lower' women to animal status. She writes: '[In the history of slavery, Black women were] at the bottom of the pile, treated like animals instead of human beings. As I listened to these victims of pornography, I heard young people describe how they felt about seeing other women in pornography, how they felt about the way women's genitals and breasts were displayed and women's bodies are shown in compromising positions. I thought about the time of slavery, when Black women had their bodies invaded, their teeth and limbs examined, their bodies checked out for breeding, checked out as you would an animal, and I said to myself, We've come a long way, haven't we?'

Porn titles comprising racism or speciesism, or racism and speciesism: 'Animal Sex Among Black Women,' 'Black Bitch,' 'Black Girl's Animal Love,' 'Bitch's Black Stud,' 'Gang Banged by Blacks,' 'Geisha Girls,' 'Oriental Sadist's Pet.' 'Raped by Arab Terrorists,' and 'Bound Harem Girl.'

Collins, P. H. (1993: 101), in 'Pornography and Black Women's Bodies,' note that, 'Certain 'races' of people have been defined as being more body-like, more animal-like, and less godlike than others.' Biological notions of race and gender prevalent in the early nineteenth century which fostered the animalistic icon of Black female sexuality were joined by the appearance of a racist biology incorporating the concept of degeneracy (Foucault, 1980). While the sexual and racial dimensions of being treated like an animal are important, the economic foundation underlying this treatment is critical. Animals can be economically exploited, worked, sold, killed, and consumed. As 'mules,' African-American women become susceptible to such treatment. [these views reinforced by pornographic images of Black women]. Publicly exhibiting Black women may have been central to objectifying Black women as animals and to creating the icon of Black women as animals (Collins 1993: 101-02).

Lees and Sharpe (1984: 19) recognise that there are derogatory names for young men too, such as 'wanker' and 'prick' - interestingly, no animal names are used to depict men, at least in this study, while the authors claim that there is a far bigger choice of hurtful names to aim at females rather than males.

The Anti Nazi League (2000: 11) cites Holocaust denier David Irvin who says of Hungarian Jews being shipped to Auschwitz in 1944: 'You are talking about 45,000 tonnes of meat.'

Dehumanisation Processes. Podcast No. 5 (part one).

Why do dehumanisation and/or depersonalisation processes "work"?

Here I suggest, when nonhuman metaphors are used...

"He yelled, 'You murdering, Irish SCUM, you're an ANIMAL. What did I say? A murdering Irish ANIMAL'"

Gerry Conlon: Proved Innocent, emphasis in the original.

...that is it the existing "lesser-than" moral status of nonhuman animals.  The very fact that we understand that nonhuman are inferior and killable puts humans conceptualised as nonhuman in extreme danger.


The podcast uses this text and references.

LISTEN | MP3 | 28 minutes | English

The Fourth On Human-Nonhuman Relations Podcast.

How old is the "Animal Rights Movement"? You will be surprised to hear that it is less than 5 years old.

Should a rights-based movement advocate vegetarianism before veganism?

We end with a 1985 disc (scratches and all), Wot! No Meat by Captain Sensible on Animus Records.

About 12 mins in, don't get confused (I almost did) between Peter (Singer) and PeTA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).


LISTEN | MP3 | 22 minutes | English