Some Victims Are More Equal Than Others
Viewing Animals As More Than Pets
For many of us, our nonhuman companions are family. They are our dearest friends who we love a lot and cannot bear to see suffer in any way.
Many animal rights activists want to elevate other nonhuman animals to the status of dogs and cats who we care for so dearly. They rightfully point out that there is no reason to value the lives of these nonhuman animals over those of cows, pigs, chickens, fishes, lobsters and others. Favoring one species of thinking, feeling beings over another is irrational. However, while making this very important and necessary point, animal rights activists might end up downplaying the magnitude of the nonhuman oppression that pervades every level of human society.
Exploitation of nonhuman animals is largely driven by a form of discrimination known as speciesism. The term speciesism was coined by British psychologist Richard D. Ryder and was popularized by Peter Singer in his book Animal Liberation.
Singer defines speciesism as:
Speciesism is an attitude of bias against a being because of the species to which it belongs
This definition, however, is too simplistic and does not truly represent the nature of the systemic oppression that is speciesism. Discrimination without power and privilege, although still prejudice, does not truly create sustainable harm.
At Species Revolution, we attempted to define speciesism to reflect what it means to us:
Speciesism refers to a set of irrational beliefs and prejudices, exhibited in various forms and degrees, which reproduce political and social structures that yield power and privilege to human animals over other species of animals.
What does this mean? It means that speciesism is not just a matter of an attitude of bias but can take the form of a broad range of actions and attitudes that harm others by strengthening a hierarchical social structure which benefits humans.
It means that nobody can be speciesist towards human animals.
Both human and nonhuman animals can be biased against humans, of course. But such a bias is not enforced and propagated by societies, religions, corporations, or governments. To act on such a bias is excruciatingly difficult and would unquestionably result in the perpetrator begin labelled a criminal. Almost no court of law on this planet would hesitate to convict a human who commits a crime against other humans citing a prejudice against their own species as the reason.
Compare this with the atrocities the human species inflicts upon other species of sentient beings. We enslave, abuse, and murder trillions of animals every year. Such obscenity is only possible through systemic discrimination against nonhuman species and not just bias. And any language, actions, or laws which enable discrimination against nonhuman animals are speciesist.
So, is putting “pets” and endangered animals over “food animals” and others speciesism? Of course it is. It reinforces human supremacy and our species’ assumed authority over other beings. Our species assigns moral value to pets precisely because they serve as our pets. We assign moral value to endangered species because we have convinced ourselves that preserving species diversity is important to protecting ourselves and our environment. In neither case is the personhood of nonhuman animals acknowledged.
Wikipedia defines “pet” as is “an animal kept primarily for a person’s company, protection, or entertainment rather than as a working animal, sport animal, livestock, or laboratory animal.” “Pet” is just another category of exploitation. Animals we consider pets are victims of systemic speciesist discrimination, not benefactors of human compassion.
Two million dogs are bred in puppy mills and 1.2 million dogs are “euthanized” in the US every year. There are currently more than 150 million fishes enslaved in American homes, almost all of whom were bred and bought. In fact, we spend more than two billion dollars on buying animals as pets every year. We performed experiments on 102633 hamsters, 60797 dogs, and 18898 cats last year, not to mention the more than 25 million fishes, mice, rats, and birds, on whom there is no accurate count.
As a species, we still view pets as products and simply don’t give a shit about their suffering unless it’s convenient to us. Any human who legally owns pets can control their right to freedom, autonomy, reproduction, and life itself. When human interests and the interests of pets are in conflict with each, the former win almost every time, even if they are relatively trivial in nature.
Those who claim to care about pets don’t do justice to their personhood either. They talk about nonhumans’ loyalty and friendship to us as reasons to show them compassion. They even make bad movies about their “purpose.”
My point is simple: Dogs, cats, and other pets are victims of speciesism just like any other nonhuman animals, albeit to a lesser degree. When we ask humans to consider the hypocrisy of loving some animals while eating others, we are only challenging speciesism in its mildest form. We are essentially making comparisons between two groups of victims and asking the oppressors to elevate the status of one group to the that of the other. It is analogous to a white person pointing out the similarities between two races to a fellow white person to make them question their hatred towards one of those races. Needless to say, it can be very problematic.
Making comparisons between victims often serves as a shortcut one can take while advocating for veganism without effectively straining the human supremacy within their audience. Is this a shortcut we need to take to be effective advocates for animals? Maybe. However, it is important to keep in mind that our ultimate goal is to end speciesism. This might require taking our advocacy one step further and actually questioning human supremacy.
We need to compare farmed animals and others to us, humans. We need to iterate the fact that nonhuman animals deserve the moral consideration that we give members of our species. We need to elevate the status of all nonhuman animals to persons, not pets. We need to be unrelentingly anti-speciesist.
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Note 1
I know that many animal advocates don’t use the word “pet” and prefer “companion animal” instead. However, I have found that “pet” accurately describes the victim status of many animals and have decided to use the word in this article about their victimhood.
Note 2
If you’ve come this far, you likely care deeply about justice for nonhuman beings. I urge you to consider making a donation to one or more of the sanctuaries I mention in the captions of the images in the article. They do amazing work.
Note 3
I noticed that all the people whose images I included in the article are mammals. That was purely coincidental. Mammals don’t deserve more consideration than others.
Note 4
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