Weird

[eumelia]

I was talking to a friend of mine about vegetarianism (seeing that both of us are) and I was saying that it was the industry of meat and how environmentally damaging it is. Not to mention that a huge amount of crops are grown just to feed the future steaks, burgers and what-not and that those crops could be grown to feed, ya know, people.

So far it's all well and good, but when I mention that I think humans are more important than animals and that I care more about human rights than animal rights my friend says: "I'm really shocked to hear you say that".
Shocked.
Seriously?!
The fact that I prefer my own species better over another? (except cats of course, but then again, they are Gods upon the Earth).
How is this shocking?
Someone explain to me, how is saying human rights are more important that animal rights, shocking?

Anyone?

Comments

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

I dunno...I know folks who feel like pretty much everything wrong with the world is due to human error and greed and inhumanity, so they are misanthropic and feel like humans have lost their right to be valued over other animals.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yep, I was about to say the same thing. THer'es some folks who get really passionately involved with animals rights over humans rights, and usually they're acting out of some sort of deep rooted misanthropy, and it's latched onto the animal rights issue as a means of expressing itself.

There is much to hate about our species. But it is still... our species.

[(Anonymous)]

and the mindset that we've fucked it all up neglects to notice that a very small minority are actually responsible for "fucking it all up..." I mean, we all play our role, but if, like me, you consider a main culprit to be capitalism, we all participate but a select small few benefit enough to make sure capitalism remains hegemonic.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree. For sure greed is the fundemental motivating principle of humanity. But most people simply don't have a choice in their lifestyles. Capitalist consumerism has us all locked up inside these neat little prisons.

taken as individuals, a lot of people are really quite decent.

Well. Some of them.

A few.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

usually they're acting out of some sort of deep rooted misanthropy
Sounds about right.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Particularly the ones who are prepared to injure or kill other people over it.

The animal rights people here piss me off no end. Scientists don't experiment on animals for shits and giggles. They only do it where it is necessary to save human lives. We have very strict regulations in the UK about animal testing and welfare.

About 20 years ago there was a Mink farm near here. Horrible business. Before the fur laws were tightened up. Some animal rights people came one night and released them all. the Mink promptly ran rampage through the local environment and killed EVERYTHING, and then starved to death.

Took 4 or 5 years for the wildife to begin to recover.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Dude.
Can we say bad planning!

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

it was not their most brilliant move ever. And that was the last time the animal liberation front ever came back out these ways.

[tamara-russo.livejournal.com]

Scientists don't experiment on animals for shits and giggles. They only do it where it is necessary to save human lives

That's not exactly true, mind you. There is so much contempt when it comes to animal testing - rats and mice are a dime a dozan, and most testings, though not for "shits and giggles" as you call it, have very little scientific value, not to mention "human-life-saving" value, and are done plainly for the scientist publishing list.

I'm not saying there aren't experimants that are important, but at least here in Israel there is a committy that's supposed to check every request for animal testing, and they approve almost everything, because they, as so many people do, consider animal life expendable/

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I appreciate it will be very different in each and every country. But I'm ~fairly~ certain the use of animals for testing in the UK is very very strictly controlled.

Which probably means the biochem companies all do their testing in countries that allow it.

[master-genie.livejournal.com]

alas, that's a popular trend among eco-activists and vegans; Murray Bookchin told about the dangers of "eco-fascism" couple of decades ago.
Many of such convinced vegetarians and eco-warriors gradually come to the point when they start proclaiming fascist slogans because "reducing number of humans will save the Earth". They happen to forget that human is animal as well, and struggle for human rights (e.g. anti-war activities or strikes) is surely much more important than rescuing animals and combating vivisection (however noble the latter option may sound).

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm going to shout to the bloody animal rights people who berate me for not being vegan!

[seilduksgata.livejournal.com]

Personally I'd say I put human rights above animal rights too, however, I'm not too surprised by her shock. But with vegetarianism, its not really a conflict of rights, is it? It seems to be that its a win-win situation for both species (I was veggie for 14 years until I moved here and it got too hard...).

But I guess I'd phrase it differently too - to say its ok to favour your own species sounds a bit like saying you'd favour your own race, gender, etc. Which would be wrong. So I guess I'd try to elevate it out of that category by claiming that humans ARE a more developed species, and therefore more precious. But of course that probably sound more controversial to some people than your version...

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I was just really surprised by her reaction to what I said.
As though I was saying I was superior to others by virtue of being human, which I really wasn't!

[qilora.livejournal.com]

"Someone explain to me, how saying human rights are more important that animal rights, is shocking?"

in my own experience, the sort of folks who want to put all other animals all "above" humans, are folks who have a lot of generational-guilt for just how badly animals *have* been treated/etc. by our species...

so they want to try and compensate by saying that other animals are more important than humans, or at least that human-rights should never be a priority above animal-rights... its like "self-hating humans"...

in my own opinion though, in order to be truly loving/considerate to *any* one else, we have to first thoroughly love our-self.. once we love our self, we can reach out to those who are closest to us, and then continue that out-reach further and further, as time goes by...



human rights *is* animal-rights... in order to care for the humans we will take actions that will result in things like less hunger and less harm from environmental pollution and so on, and that WILL benefit our non-human cousins as well...

putting animal-rights politically "above" human-rights is akin to being a cobbler who is busily making shoes for all the town's children, while he has no time for his own kids, and they have to run around barefoot....

its about priorities... you need to keep your focus close to home before you can be at all effective to the rest of the world...

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

I don't tend to either or this one. I am for human rights and I am for animal rights. I'm going to put my energies toward human rights because I do not believe that a world that is organized around human rights, justice, etc, could be a world that is cruel and inhumane to animals, but I do believe that a world that fetishizes kindness to animals at the expense of kindness to people is not a world I want to live in.

i was recently at a training around ecological issues put on by an organization that looks at climate change through a lense of racial and economic justice, and a person said, "I don't care about the polar bear and the penguins, I care about the black kid in hunter's point who's about to die from an asthma attack." the statement shocked me and shook me, mainly because, you know, I DO care about the polar bears and the penguins, deeply, but I also care about that kid with the asthma, and her whole community. I think the reason that comment was made was because so much of the discussion about ecology and animal rights is from this incredibly privileged world view where environmental degradation doesn't affect "us"(where us means mostly class privileged white folks) and so we can comfortably make it all about the animals. People who live in communities where toxic waste is mined, or dumped, or processed, they don't have that privilege. The elevation of animal rights over human rights has a very white, first world, economically privileged character to it. so as much as it makes me sad to hear the polar bear and the penguin dissed, I'm still going to cast my lot with the folks with that perspective. because a world that doesn't poison little black kids in the poor part of town will not be poisoning the egrets, either. ya know?

ooooh, lookie, this musta pushed one of my buttons! LOL

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I get the whole pushed button thing :)

That's the thing, my friend went all; "How can you think you're better?"

I'm not better, I have a massive amount of privilege as a white (Ashkenazi Jewish Israeli), middle class, university student and that is my perspective that only when humans have a redistribution of wealth of resource (which at this point includes domesticated animals, unfortunately) we can begin to really talk about the mass gaia system on which we live. At the moment it's best not be a consumer of an industry that causes such problems for people, animals and environment.

Ya know?

[mao4269.livejournal.com]

I've heard the argument that valuing human and (non-human) animal lives equally is a natural extension of other pushes towards egalitarianism. If people shouldn't be valued differently based on their phenotype (i.e. skin color), sex, sexual orientation, ability, etc., why should one species be valued over another? That being said, personally I'm perfectly okay with being speciesist (including tending to like cats better than people, but that's where the misanthropy mentioned above comes in to play :)).

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

When I was a teenager I thought I was misanthropic, but I was just too sensitive and had to shut out the world so I wouldn't be too affected by its, you know, issues.
Now that I'm older I feel that as a part of this world and as a species we hold a great responcibility towards the world, but especially towards ourselves.

I'm a cat worshiper too (see icon).

[mao4269.livejournal.com]

Well put!

To clarify, the bit about cats was (partly) joking. On the "policy" level I value human lives over (non-human) animal lives, including being fine with much medical research on animals (even cats). While I generally don't consciously apply it, thinking about it, my moral justification for this speciesism is (the perhaps debatable idea) that each individual human has more potential to make the world a better place than each individual (non-human) animal.

At the same time, on a more individual/emotional level, the bit about cats was true - when visiting people with cats I consistently have to remind myself not to ignore the people in favor of the cats (or in Israel with its over-abundance of stray cats, ignore my neighbors to make nice to the neighborhood cats).

[constintina.livejournal.com]

one of the core tenets of some animal rights ideology is that animals are oppressed, and so by saying you care more about human than animal rights, you are playing oppression olympics. Raicsm = sexism = speciesism, don't you know.

I care about "animal rights"...though, actually, I kind of hate phrasing it that way. I don't know to what extent it really makes sense to talk about the "rights" of non-human animals. But that's my peeve. I agree with the comments re: prioritizing and getting your own house in order before you can go about saving everyone else.

I also, while being vegan and not buying leather and wuvving the wittle animules 2 deth, can't fucking stand the broader animal rights movement and don't identify with it or focus any organizing or activism time or energy in that direction, beyond occasionally signing a petition.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

can't fucking stand the broader animal rights movement and don't identify with it or focus any organizing or activism time or energy in that direction, beyond occasionally signing a petition.
I totally share that one with you. I have a friend who eats fish (but not meat, poultry or dairy) because she needs protein for health reasons, and doesn't eat the others for her own reasons.
An animal rights person came to us and asked her if she'd consider being vegan to help save the animals and the earth, the look of disgust on that person's face at hearing she ate fish and didn't even care to look at her again.
I mean, c'mon!

Prioritizing, that's the thing. By doing the local you affect the global (that's how I view my activities at Uni).

[constintina.livejournal.com]

An animal rights person came to us and asked her if she'd consider being vegan to help save the animals and the earth, the look of disgust on that person's face at hearing she ate fish and didn't even care to look at her again.

this is why it took so long for me to be able to even conceive of myself as being vegan.

By doing the local you affect the global

yup.

[sabotabby]

I get that reaction a lot, being vegetarian for pretty much the same reason.

A lot of environmentalism and animal rights activism is a function of privilege. I don't often say that because it makes me sound like a dick, but it's true. I'm not saying that all greens are bourgeois, but the sort of misanthropic anti-human attitudes a lot of them reflexively hold is far from progressive.

Case in point: Our Green Party is made up of a lot of naive leftists and quite a few anti-immigration former members of the Conservative Party. They're currently led by Elizabeth May, who is anti-choice and used to advise the most hated Prime Minister of Canada ever, Brian Mulroney.

That's not to say that I'm unconcerned about animal welfare and environmentalism. It was the first sort of activism I intentionally got involved with (especially since I was a misanthropic child with relative privilege!). But I find a lot of environmentalists all too willing to let a bunch of brown people die so that they'll have nice natural spaces to go hiking in.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

When I was a teenager I was privileged (still am, Jewish Israeli, parents pay for uni and such), misanthropic and nihilistic so I didn't participate in activism.

When I became more active and I saw how intertwined my actions are in the reality of the world, as a subject, as a consumer etc. then I knew that my own personal actions had to reflect my opinions.
My opinion is that people are important, from that premise everything else flows.

I was just really surprised that what I said made her think that I thought I was superior by virtue of being human. I mean, I often joke about being superior because I used to be a misanthropic nihilistic baby.

[cue-revolution.livejournal.com]

Yea, I totally agree! I've been asking Just Food, which is an organization in Ottawa that promotes food security and environmentalism via urban agriculture and buying local, why their "buying local" guide mentions nothing about the use of migrant workers. I guess that wouldn't sit well with people's appetites for local produce now that consumption has turned into a way to erase guilt/complicity and a way to achieve a "special whiteness".

In response to the post's question about human vs. animal rights, all I'd like to say is, what is "human" and who gets to decide what is "human"? the category of human is highly controlled and policed, so why not question the privilege we have in defining that? i think it has a lot to do with language and communication. i think you can apply spivak's analysis from "Can the Subaltern Speak?" to this debate and think of animals as subalterns.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with Spivak.

Could you recommend a good online resource? Or should I just look for the test you suggest in your comment?

[cue-revolution.livejournal.com]

there's an AWESOME e-journal called "borderlands". they're big fans of foucault's biopolitics and agamben's concept of "bare life" and applying that to guantanamo prisoners to lambs and cows to people with terminal illnesses.

spivak's "can the subaltern speak" is very dense and i'm still trying to go through it piece by piece and understand it more with time. but here's what she's getting at... the gap in communication between the subaltern and the western intellectual. the western intellectual only listens to the subaltern in language that is familiar to them. cries, utterances, other forms of communication, these don't register. the subaltern can "speak" but is not heard.

similarly, you can argue that animals are subalterns because there are methods of communication that we as humans don't know about. if the animals tried to speak to us in ways we could understand, through our modes of language, then they wouldn't really subalterns.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Thanks!
Interesting ideas, certainly puts a new spin on things, I'll definitely get into those sources as soon as I have time to read for "leisure" again.

[cue-revolution.livejournal.com]

also, there is a RIDICULOUS essay by derrida called "the animal that therefore i am (more to follow)", in which he writes about carno-phallogocentrism, which is really dense deconstruction of Genesis, but it starts with 5 pages or so about him standing naked in front of his cat who doesn't know either of them are naked, so it gets derrida thinking about the gap in communication. but wow, he wrote about standing naked in front of his cat. wtf. academics, especially critical theorists, can be nuts.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Well, I heard that when Derida passed away there was a collective sigh of relief from all philosophy/cultural studies/critical theory students, because finally, finally he wouldn't publish anything else... as ridiculous as that essay.

My cat and I communicate fine, thanks ;)

[sabotabby]

Oh man, the "buy local" people! I think they're envisioning nice organic farms with happy farming families, not work camps in Leamington where they spray exploited Mexican tomato-pickers with carcinogenic pesticides. Don't get me started.

[stateofwonder.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised that your friend said that, though I do find that attitude irritating, seeing as I work in human rights and the idea that animals are more important is very common and very detrimental. It comes up a lot, one example being the creation of protected areas -- essentially the government, with the encouragement of some rich white benefactors, decides that in order to protect certain animals, they need to create national parks that just so happen to be on indigenous peoples' lands. Now why would it be that there would be so much rich biodiversity on indigenous lands? Could it be, perhaps, that there are cultural mechanisms in place to help maintain biodiversity and protect the environment....?

Nah, that couldn't be it. Let's just evict them all. The animals are what really matter here.

So indigenous peoples are basically kicked off the land that they have lived on sustainably for centuries, fucking them over completely because their sacred sites, medicinal plants and herbs, and traditional foods are all found within those lands. They are disconnected from their culture and reduced to hawking cheap trinkets at the park gate, or maybe working as cleaners in the fancy hotels if they're really lucky. Meanwhile, tourists can come in and look at the "protected" animals and the "pristine" wildlife, blissfully ignorant that the creation of this park has displaced many communities, which leads to cultural erosion. Not to mention the fact that indigenous environmental management techniques are incredibly effective, and now that knowledge is no longer being implemented... but anyway.

I'm very much of the opinion that we're all animals and that all life is connected, so I wouldn't necessarily say that one form of life is more important than another. But if it came down to it, I would probably rather save a human life than another animal life, simply because I empathize with humans more than animals and I'm fascinated by them. Of course, different kinds of animals are always good for different kinds of companionship, and cats will always have a special place in my heart as well ;)

Sorry bout writing a novel there!

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

That's exactly it! We're all animals and everything is connected.
I suppose I didn't articulate my point well enough, but I'm just surprised that she surmised that I thought myself superior simply by virtue of being human (when quite obviously cats are superior to all).

[sahara-moon.livejournal.com]

well, i am a strict-vegetarian... i guess lacto veg would be the best way to describe it... so i agree with you. i wanted to post a link here. i just posted it on my latest entry but you might skim over it. i havent listened to it yet but i can imagine it being right up both our alleys... if you have an ipod you can download... otherwise, you can listen on your computer.
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/ethicsofeating/index.shtml

best radio program in the States... ever!!!! well, Democracy Now is pretty dope too :)