Speciesist ad used with CC 2.0 BY license from flickr.com/photos/equality

Apologies I haven’t written for so long. I find I am constantly thinking of things throughout the day that make me want to hop on this blog and drill out a post. Why that doesn’t usually happen, I don’t know.

But here’s something: A few posts ago, I wrote about a vegan bar in Brooklyn with a trophy deer hunting game as a “joke.” I was surprised from the support I got in the comments there. Only one comment disagreed with my position on the game,

No deers were harmed in the making of that video game

I’m vegan and I say get over it lol

Btw, agree or disagree, I took a very long time to approve everyone’s comments. I’m fixing my email notifications now so that doesn’t happen again.

What does it matter if it doesn’t hurt the animal?

It is very revealing of our speciesism that our primary focus on what we call animal rights is how our actions might inflict suffering upon them–and that actions which do not cause suffering do not matter. For example, here’s something given to me on Facebook:

This is the problem I have with a lot of vegans and freegans generally (though not all) — too focused on protecting their “personal morality” instead of focusing on abolish the objectionable practices altogether. You know what? If you eat something from the trash that was near meat, it doesn’t do a thing to an animal — good or bad. Hell, if you eat meat from the trash, it doesn’t do a thing to an animal either. Stop worry about your personal purity, which, as Chris suggests, is really about ego, and shift your focus to asking what you can really do to put an end to industries that exploit the planet and human and nonhuman animals.

This statement is similar to the comments I get whenever I refuse to wear leather shoes even if they’re second-hand or non-vegan food that is going to be thrown out. The last time I politely rejected to take someone’s leather shoes, I was told “so you want the animal to die in vain?”

It’s statements like these that remind me how we really don’t understand just how speciesist we are. Explain to me how wearing a murder victim’s body like a pair of shoes prevents her from “dying in vain”? As far as the non-vegan food, I am often accused of just “letting it go to waste.” There it is again, the speciesism is so subtle but it’s right there plain to see. “Waste?” Why don’t people accuse me of being wasteful when I bury my family members when they die? Nobody throws up their hands and tells me about this great recipe that could have used a little something from the deceased.

The answer is simple. We don’t call this waste because we don’t think of human beings as commodities in the first place. When you say “it’s just going to go to waste,” or that the animal would otherwise “die in vain” you are acknowledging your own assumption that the animal is a resource in the first place. If you are really concerned with the carcass as a matter of environmental conservation, try composting.

“It’s just politics.”

So is condemning someone for eating meat from the trash being “egotistical”? Is this person just getting upset over “personal purity”?

Let’s consider a hypothetical example. Say a you’re in a building alone and a young girl walks by outside. You see her from a distance. She’s very young, say 15 years old. As she walks by, she will certainly not hear a word of anything you say. In fact, nobody will. The building is empty, the glass is thick, and she is far away. So you say in amusement to yourself out lout how you’d like to do sexual things to the girl. You crack a joke about how she would resist and you’d have to resort to quieting her in some demeaning way.

At the same time, you are not actually someone who would do anything like this. You are certainly not hurting the girl either. She does not hear this and never will–nobody will. So if the thought comes into your head that there is something very wrong about what you are doing, does this mean you are being egotistical or being concerned with personal purity? Shouldn’t your focus be on real issues where people are actually getting hurt such as the genocide in east Africa?

Fine, we can all agree the girl is unscathed. But hopefully this example reveals what is so wrong with speciesism that doesn’t directly harm a species. If you’re not a sexist and/or pedophile, why would you even think or say these things to yourself? Why would you allow yourself to think of this little girl in this way? I mean, we don’t really need to have a conversation about “harm” at all, do we? This is an example of something most people believe is wrong–having nothing to do with how much “harm” it causes.

I feel exactly the same way about speciesism. I admonish the idea of thinking of an animal as a thing, a piece of meat, a shoe. It disgusts me. Indeed, there is much “harm” out there inflicted on animals. But the heart of this is speciesism. I have no idea why someone is “egotistical” for opposing the objectification of others.

Get over it

So in response to my reader, I have a serious problem with the glorification of speciesism. We do not have to examine how much harm it causes to determine if speciesism is wrong. If you are against speciesism, you are against it every time it happens.

I would love to sit down and have explained to me just how a game that rewards players for killing animals is not speciesist. Either that or perhaps we can all agree it is. So how can glorifying speciesism be acceptable to someone who is against speciesism?