4 the ethical treatment of human and non-human animals

thank god feministe & readers address a new example of peta sexism, so i don't have to... for the five millionth time. i was especially glad to see that all of the people who've contributed to that thread so far (except for a certain "activist") went straight to the heart of the problem, articulated things particularly well and even brought in a new twist that i haven't seen before in these kinds of conversations: how might one take peta's tactics, keep all of the stuff that's supposed to work (drawing a parallel between human and non-human animals, shock tactics, irony, subversion, comedy, street theater) and remove not-ok stuff like relying on and promoting misogynistic, patriarchal values? what would such campaigns look like? i think that's a particularly useful discussion to have. it's so good to see more and more of this kind of critique:

It would be worthwhile to demonstrate how cruel the meat industry is to animals by tapping into empathy, using humans to draw a parallel. But the thing is, you have to do something that evokes feelings of outrage and shock. To draw the parallel, the viewers have to feel empathy for the human stand-in in order to then apply that to animals.

That’s not accomplished with putting women naked in cages or painting them up like tigers. In a society in which that is so closely related to images in a great deal of pornography, the display is likely to elicit sexual excitement or moral scolding than outrage on the behalf of the woman. ...

-astrea

(and i think that's quite perfectly put).

oh, yeah, and this is damn funny (and true):

I’m a vegetarian and I can’t stand PETA.
They’re the Christian Right of the animal rights movement.

ps: i am going to make an "i'd rather eat meat than support peta" banner for all veg*ans interested in displaying it on their sites.