Speciesism has existed in different cultures with eating
On my first day at the Vans Warped Tour, I woke up in a frenzy as my alarm went off at 7 a.m. I immediately sat up, managed to hit my head on the ceiling and then retreated to a pitiful hunched upright position. Whipping open the curtain covering my bunk, I made my way to the floor, carefully stepping on the edge of the bunk below me before jumping to the ground.
I lifted up my mattress and withdrew my “I just want to drink soy lattes, save animals, and take naps” peta2 shirt and a pair of shorts, before heading to the back room to get ready for the day.
Are you familiar with the insurmountable fear that arises when you unexpectedly get pushed into a cold body of water? Or perhaps scarier, the fear that arises when you force yourself into the icy water? Well, my voluntary leap of faith that first morning of the Vans Warped Tour was oddly warm — perhaps because we were in Dallas in mid-June.
At 8 a.m. sharp, I got off the bus for our group meeting. Caroline Dymphna, the peta2 administrator for our Skins tour, gave the nine activists a rundown for the day before quickly sending us off to hit lines — the two main lines that is.
Arriving at one of the main entrances, malaise crept up my spine as I looked at the hundreds of people I was about to talk to. I anxiously gripped my “FREE STUFF” sign as I approached two punk rock teenagers, geared with my bright green outreach bag that contained 400 wristbands, 484 pieces of literature and hundreds of stickers that read “Wear Your Own Skin, Not Animals.” The talking points I had vigorously studied for the past couple of weeks with the peta2 crew inundated my mind. Instead of stressing about planning what to say, I realized that connecting on a personal level was probably more valuable than any statistic.
“Hi, my name is Tessa,” I quickly blurted out. “I’m here with peta2 to expose the merciless exploitation of animals in the animal skins industries. In the fur industry, for instance, it can take up to 100 animals to make one fur coat. Beavers, foxes, minks, raccoons, and even rabbits, dogs and cats are all used to make fur products.” A sense of satisfaction swelled up inside my body as I elicited the reaction I had hoped for. The teenagers were especially disgusted by the exploitation of rabbits, cats and dogs, immediately relating the abuse to their beloved domesticated animals at home. The rest of my talkwent over pretty well. I gave a couple more talking points, and when I was done, the two eagerly complied to help out in exchange for the free items, by texting into our petition asking UGGs to make a vegan pair of shoes.
While I was comforted by my first success doing outreach, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for giving into the teenagers’ speciesist mentality. For those of you unaware, speciesism is a term that is used, among its various definitions, to talk about the prejudice against non-human animals. By setting the rabbits, dogs and cats aside from the other animals, I allowed the teenagers to hold their affinities toward domesticated animals. Of course, I mentioned somewhere in my shpiel that no animal (or human for that matter) deserves to be exploited in such inhumane ways because you know, neck-breaking, drowning, beating and strangulation are pretty unnecessary, evil ways of killing animals for their fur.
In America, our relationship with animals is pretty consistent in its inconsistencies. While we treat some as family, we eat others on a daily basis without thinking about the blood on our hands. Our domestication of animals fuels our speciesist mentality. So then why is it that the domestication of chickens results in death while the domestication of dogs results in love and affection?
Rather than get into a historical discussion of how we hunted animals for survival and how those traits have shaped our culture, let’s focus on why we continue to maintain our discriminatory treatment of animals.
Why would most of us rather eat a cow than a cat? Is there anything fundamentally different between these two animals? Both are intelligent, sentient mammals like we are.
What’s even weirder about our human relationship with animals is that it’s not consistent across cultures. In China, for instance, it’s normal practice to eat dogs and cats in Jordan, camels serve as avid modes of transportation and food, and in India, cows are revered.
Cultural relativism helps us examine the reason for the worldwide ethical discourse relating to animals. Ultimately, there is no standard of truth in humanity. We base our ethics off of our nomos, or our social customs. Our habit of basing our ethics off of culture rather than nature, or both, enables us to move past our ethnocentric bubbles.
The lens cultural relativism offers begs me to question how can we make sense of the world when there is no objective truth? Is the answer to simply perform socially approved habits? Such as bonding with dogs while eating pig flesh?
Quite frankly, the answer is no. I’m not asking you to try the morbid unthinkable by eating a variety of animals you wouldn’t normally eat. What we need to do is closely re-examine our ethics, asking ourselves why we discriminate against animals, and why we go so far as to violently slaughter many of them for food, clothing and experimentation, among other issues. Instead of acting out of violence, living in harmony with nature is at the core of the advancement of our ethics.
Tessa Nesis is a sophomore majoring in NGOs and social change. Her column, “The Sentient Bean,” runs on Thursdays.