speciesism and Carol Adams

[Guest guest]

Another good article on speciesism is Beyond Might Makes Right, also by Matt

Ball (B.S., Engineering; M.S., Ecology; M.S., Engineering and Public Policy; ABD

(PhD), Environmental Engineering), and Jack Norris (B.S.S. in Sociology and

Philosophy). http://www.veganoutreach.org/beyond.html

 

" Yet over time, more civilized people have evolved a moral system that grants

rights not just based on self-protection, but on the Golden Rule treat your

neighbor as you would like to be treated. We know that we want to stay alive, do

not wish to suffer, etc., and we assume others like us have the same desires.

Being capable of looking beyond our own individual interests, we apply the

Golden Rule even to people who could not harm us.

 

How much like us does a being have to be before we include them under the Golden

Rule? "

 

" if a being is sentient able to experience pleasure and pain then it does matter

to that being what happens to it. Irrespective of intelligence, language, etc.,

a sentient being has interests in its existence – at the very least to avoid

pain and to stay alive. Any complete moral philosophy cannot ignore these

concerns. "

 

 

And speaking of speciesism... Carol Adams has worked over the past twenty years

with issues related to sexism, racism, environmentalism, class discrimination,

and animal abuse. She has connected these forms of violence in her work and has

fought against these forms of hate by both education and activism: She started a

hotline for battered women, is a trained advocate for rape survivors, founded a

second-hand clothing store and soup kitchen, was a chairperson of a local NAACP

housing committee, worked to increase African-American home ownership, and is a

consultant for religious organizations around the issue of sexual abuse. She has

expressed her ideas through means of writing in The Sexual Politics of Meat: A

Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, Neither Man Nor Beast, Animals and Women:

Feminist Theoretical Explorations (Duke) and Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist

Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals.

 

A few of you may remember her from A Cow at my Table

( http://www.veg.on.ca/lifelines/marapr/cow.htm ) In the documentary she pointed

out that the most difficult part of being vegetarian is not- what to eat, but

rather- living amongst meat-eaters, and she mentioned her plans to write a book

on the topic. I thought that was a very cool idea cuz it's true, it can be

extremely frustrating. Anyhow, turns out she's asking the public (vegetarians)

to share our thoughts/feelings/stories/experiences to help her with the book. So

if you're so inclined, and have a few minutes, you can fill out this

questionnaire http://www.eatveg.com/vegstuff/adams.htm Help out Carol Adams, she

rocks!

 

" My goal is not to take animal rights, add women, and stir. I'm taking the basic

concepts and ideas of second-wave feminism-concepts about structures of

oppression -and saying that species is one of those structures. We cannot just

stop at the human/animal barrier, because that barrier is part of the

construction of patriarchy. "

 

" factory farming is part of a whole culture of oppression and institutionalized

violence. The treatment of animals as objects is parallel to and associated with

patriarchal society's objectification of women, blacks, and other minorities in

order to routinely exploit them. "

 

 

" The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for

humans any more than blacks were made for whites or women for men. " Alice

Walker (author of " The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery " and " Color

Purple " )