What makes you better than them?
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a human, and like most humans, you likely believe that your pleasure and comfort come before the lives and well-being of animals such as cows and chickens. You likely believe it justified to do unspeakable things to these animals to give you food you enjoy, leather you can wear, and other little comforts. But have you ever questioned why?
Domination and ideology
Throughout human history, after one group of humans defeated and subjugated another, the victors have become oppressors and grown to think of themselves as inherently superior to the vanquished people they now dominate and exploit. In Roman law, enslaved people were treated as things, not people, although the rich Romans writing those laws interacted with the people they held as slaves and were certainly aware of their humanity.
Wherever history brings one group into the position of dominating another, the dominating group quickly grows to believe it is inherently superior than the dominated, the masters’ most trivial needs more valuable than the most basic needs of the slaves.
This belief is pure ideology — a mental construct shaped by the reality of domination. Its origin and function are pretty clear when it comes to humans dominating humans. Because we live in a time at which norms of governance are more liberal and outright violent subjugation less overtly prevalent, it’s easy to see past ideology such as racism denying the fundamental equality of all human lives.
The ideology of speciesism
When it comes to the subjugation of non-humans, things get a little trickier. We all grow up immersed in the ideology by which human existence is inherently and infinitely more valuable than non-human animals’ existence. This ideology is sometimes called ‘speciesism.’ It is more ancient and more deeply ingrained than almost any other, simply because the reality of human mastery over most non-human life has been with us for far longer than any other social reality — likely predating even the patriarchy.
I understand how anti-speciesism can be used as a blunt weapon by privileged activists against folks with less options than they have had. That, of course, has to be identified and rooted out, both from within vegan networks of struggle and in the broader context of emancipatory movements.
However — however! — the fact that these arguments are misused doesn’t invalidate the basic hypothesis that speciesism is simply another ideology of domination, rooted not in an eternal truth but in the social circumstances of violent domination which humans have a need to rationalize and justify.
Animal liberation and you
The privileged vegans’ message of “you are different than me, and hence bad” is not the rallying cry of animal liberation. Animal liberation proposes a radical reorganization of human society to provide for all human needs (not whims) without using other animals as things. It is not at all about individual morals but about a deep shift in the organization of society and economy, fully compatible with other struggles for emancipatory social reorganization.
You have to ask yourself why you believe humans’ pleasure justifies unbridled, industrialized cruelty against non-human animals (while incidentally doing massive damage to the environment.) When I did, I found there was nothing to justify this except for the oppressors’ eternal principle of Might Makes Right. If you find a different answer, I’ll be glad to hear it.
