Animal Rights and Young People (Response to Shelby)

Shelby asked "Did you ever have the revelation of realizing that the meat you were eating was an actual, once living animal? How did this affect your diet?". I can't remember when I made the connection about what meat actually is, but when I was 8 or 9 I became a strict vegetarian (without the help of my parents, something that I now realize was probably dangerous) as a protest of the meat industry. I was very vocal about animal rights, but for some reason people never took it seriously. My parents tried to be respectful, but my brothers, cousins, friends, and even aunts and uncles would taunt me about my decision. They would shove meat in my face, chase me around the yard with it, and make rude "jokes" about my vegetarianism. People also always tried to talk me out of my decision. They would say things like "Oh come on, it's already dead, what difference does it make if you eat it now?" Somehow they couldn't understand that I didn't want to participate in a violent and abusive tradition. When I was ten, I wrote a complaint letter to McDonalds for using animal fat in their french fries. I also "protested" outside of McDonalds with posters I made. Even though I think it's important for young people to start becoming passionate about issues, and even though those things I did were significant in my development as a political and opinionated person, people again treated me as if I was silly for caring so much.

Question 1: Why are people concerned with animal rights often not taken seriously?

Question 2: Why are young people concerned with anything not taken seriously?

Response to "In Defense of Lady Gaga"

Becca wrote a post defending Lady Gaga's "meat dress" because in some sense, it was subversive and challenging to our social norms. She argued that one interpretation of the dress is that it brought attention to the objectification of both women and animals. In a way, I see Becca's point, because this dress probably caused a lot of people to think about the way we treat both animals and women, but just because something generates good discussion doesn't mean it is good in itself. The fact is, Lady Gaga objectified both herself and animals. If that starts a discussion about the objectification of animals and/or women-while those discussions are important to have-it doesn't justify the dress itself. I always wonder why people think things like this are subversive; she is not truly challenging our society for objectifying women, she herself is participating in the objectification of women and animals. Just because she brought attention to this issue doesn't mean it was an appropriate way to protest it.

It is very common for people to use shock value in order to get a message across. I have already blogged about PETA's horrible tactics for raising awareness to their issues. People go to shock value because it is easy. Doing something shocking will catch people's attention; educating people on the issue you are interested in is a lot harder. Keane posted this quote recently: "noble things are difficult." I think this is usually true. It is hard to promote change for important issues, but you have do it the right way in order for it to have any merit.

Question 1: Are there any redeeming qualities about using a "shock value" tactic?

Question 2: Is Lady Gaga's meat dress any worse than wearing leather or fur?

Hierarchical Thinking

When we talk about issues such as animal ethics, the discussion about who deserves rights often leads to hierarchical thinking- that is, ranking things in order of how much they matter (often in relation to the person doing the ranking). It may be human nature to want to categorize everything and place a certain value on everything, but that does not mean it is correct to do so. It is important to recognize that things we cannot directly relate to, such as animals, are simply different than us, not necessarily better or worse, smarter or stupider, more important or less important. Somebody said in class that is impossible to get rid of our human bias, and it's not wrong to have it. While this is true, we need to keep in mind that since we can't think independently of our experiences as human, we also can't truly judge the value of an animal, because we are not objective (and never will be). We can all probably agree that the quote "better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied" is speciesist, but no human would trade their life for a pig's because we will always prefer our own species over another. It's not our fault that we have this bias, but we have to be aware of it and we shouldn't categorize things in relation to us. We show preference towards animals that are more like humans (such as apes) over animals that don't have many human-like qualities (such as ants). These preferences rely on the premise that human-like traits are the criteria for moral consideration. This is problematic because it is a form of prejudice; it is favoring sameness over difference. We need to accept differences as just that: differences, not deficiencies.

Question: If animals have some skills that humans lack (such as a dog's sense of hearing), why do we still place humans at the top of the hierarchy?