On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.

com/

On Nonhuman Slavery- Page 2 -

About
Archives
Contribute
Resources

"We can see quite plainly that our present civilization is built on the exploitation of animals, just as past
civilisations were built on the exploitation of slaves." -Donald Watson

August 1, 2010

We Say We Love Animals

“On the one hand we say we love animals, but what it really comes down to is that we love to use
animals for our own purposes.” – Lesli Bisgould

leave a comment

Early Animal Advocacy & The Power Of

Learning From Our Past

1 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

The following is excerpted from an interview with Diane Beers conducted by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau for
Satya Magazine.

You use the phrase “historical amnesia” to refer to the fact that contemporary animal activists—and
society as a whole—know nothing of the legacy of animal activism in the U.S. What are some of the
effects of having “historical amnesia”? Why is it so important to know our legacy?

Animal advocacy has an amazing history, yet it is essentially an untold story. African American activists will
often say, “A people without a history is like a tree without roots.” Indeed, if activists don’t know the history
of their cause, they can have no sense of their movement’s struggles, long-term strategies, achievements and
heroes. In addition, they can’t promote their long impressive movement to the public, and their
opponents—the meat industry, medical research industry and the government—will fill the void. They have
been the ones most aggressively and successfully constructing negative images and outright myths of animal
advocacy that the public often believes. Read the rest of this entry »

1 comment

July 28, 2010

Fetishizing Ancient Indigenous Rituals

To Ease The Modern Mind

2 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

A disturbing trend among carnists is to claim that it’s morally acceptable to kill and consume animals so long
as we do so respectfully, and “honor” the animals with a prayer thanking them for their “gift” or “sacrifice.”
(As though the animals are choosing to willingly donate their lives for our trivial gastronomic pleasures.)

As part of this defense, carnists will cite the killing rituals of indigenous tribes or Native Americans as a
rationale for their decision to continue to consume animal products. But, as Mary Martin notes, “If you’re
going to claim that it was good for Native Americans so it’s good for us, please know that they had an
ecological ethic that we simply don’t share. They killed only what they would eat, used practically every part
of the [animal], killed him themselves, and didn’t consider animals beneath them as we do. Saying a prayer
and thanking the animal are parts of a larger spiritual context and a relationship with ‘Mother Earth’ that
most mainstream people in the developed world don’t ordinarily live by. And yet they romanticize and even
fetishize indigenous people’s practices when it’s to their advantage.” However, “if you don’t need to kill
anyone to survive, no amount of storytelling and mythmaking (or myth borrowing/co-opting) around that
slaughter excuses it.” Read the rest of this entry »

3 comments

July 25, 2010

Toward a Non-Speciesist Psychoethic

3 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

Art by Pat Racimora

Speciesism is a ubiquitous ideology in which countless nonhuman beings are sacrificed to serve human ends
(Singer, 1990). Moreover, the system may well be supported by a web of deleterious psychosocial processes
(Arluke & Sanders, 1996) and, as such, can be detrimental to humans as well as nonhumans. Psychology, as
the field that seeks to understand human motivation and defines the parameters of social values and
normative behavior, is ideally positioned to challenge the speciesist status quo. However, the widespread
practice of using animals other than human for psychological research (Sharpe, 1988), the failure to consider
that speciesist practices may incur psychological repercussions, and the dearth of literature on the paradoxical
human-nonhuman relationship demonstrate psychology’s apparent sanction of speciesism.

Indeed, the received psychological view is based upon a set of implicit assumptions that shape and support
anthropocentric beliefs and behaviors. Most notable is the assumption that the only psycho-emotionally and
ontologically meaningful relationships are inter-human. By assuming that the nonhuman-human relationship
is of little or no consequence, psychology disregards the ways in which humanity’s treatment of other species
may both reflect and reinforce mental wellness and illness. Read the rest of this entry »

1 comment

Praying For Peace With Blood On Our Hands

4 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

Today, people all over the country will go to church and pray for a more compassionate, peaceful world.
Later, they will go home and consume the products of slavery, misery and violence. How can we expect to
achieve spiritual harmony and live a compassionate, ethical life while contributing to the suffering of others
for no other reason than for our own selfish pleasures and desires?

Peace, justice and compassion all begin within ourselves and are reflected by our everyday actions and
choices. We must, as Gandhi remarked, “Be the change [we] wish to see in the world.” If we want peace, we
must be peaceful. If we want compassion, we must be compassionate. If we want mercy, we must be
merciful.

Those who believe they are practicing these virtues by occasionally purchasing “free-range” eggs or
“humane” meat, should carefully consider the truth behind such labels, and ask themselves whether it’s
ethical to take the lives of other sentient beings simply for our own enjoyment, regardless of how “humanely”
they are treated. Read the rest of this entry »

leave a comment

July 23, 2010

Choosing Nonviolence As a Way Of Life

5 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

Photo by Kent Marshall

“Nonviolence as a way of life isn’t about taking on yet another cause or making your life more complicated.
It’s about simplifying your life by connecting to your values. It’s about realizing that you have choices and
that those choices matter. Start making more choices aligned with your values of justice, kindness, and
compassion and you’ll build a world reflecting those values. It’s about living smarter, not harder.” – Matt
Bear

leave a comment

July 22, 2010

Animals Suffer a Perpetual ‘Holocaust’

6 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

Isaac Bashevis Singer fled Nazi Europe in 1935 and came to this country. He married my grandmother, who
had escaped from Hitler’s Germany in 1940. He went on to become a lauded author and won the Nobel Prize
for literature in 1978. His family — those who stayed behind — were killed in the concentration camps.

My grandfather was also a principled vegetarian. He was one of the first to equate the wholesale slaughter of
humans to what we perpetrate against animals every day in slaughterhouses. He realized that the systems of
oppression and murder that had been used in the Holocaust were the systems being used to confine, oppress
and slaughter animals. He attributed to a character in one of his books something he believed in himself: “In
relation to [animals], all people are Nazis. For [them], it is an eternal Treblinka.”

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, has come under fire from the Anti-Defamation
League for a campaign highlighting my grandfather’s ideas as well as writings from others — including
German Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno, who was forced into exile by the Nazis, and Edgar Kupfer-
Koberwitz, who was imprisoned in Dachau — that compare the suffering of Holocaust victims with that of
farmed animals. Read the rest of this entry »

leave a comment

July 21, 2010

The Feminist’s Dilemma

7 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

I’m a proud feminist, as anyone who cares about the plight of women on our
planet should be. In many parts of the world, women are still treated as property. They have few, if any,
rights and are subject to exploitation, indignities, and violence on a daily basis. As we feminists struggle for an
end to female oppression, we must also consider the females that we, ourselves, unknowingly oppress. Dairy
cows, though not human, are perhaps the most horribly abused females on the planet. As we fight for human
equality, should we not also concern ourselves with how humans exploit the very thing that makes an animal
female, that makes an animal a mother?

If you think that statement sounds crazy, it’s likely because you, like most Americans, know little about what
goes on in our nation’s dairy farms. (PETA recently released shocking undercover footage from a Land
O’Lakes dairy supplier). You may think it’s silly, even offensive, to compare the plight of female humans
with that of another species, but keep an open mind as you read further. You may just be surprised.
Read the rest of this entry »

13 comments

July 15, 2010

The Answer Is To Change Our Perception

8 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

“As long as we see animals as ours to eat, ours to manipulate, ours to exploit, ours to confine, ours to kill,
there’s no end to what we can do to them. It’s that mindset that simply lends itself to the kind of mechanized
system we have today. The answer isn’t to change production methods. The answer is to change our
perception of and relationship with non-human animals.” – Colleen Patrick Goudreau

1 comment

July 14, 2010

Our Common Capacity To Suffer

“Both humans and animals share the ability to suffer from restricted
freedom of movement, from the loss of social freedom, and to experience pain at the loss of a loved one.
Both groups suffer or suffered from their common capacity to be terrified by being hunted, tormented, or
injured. Both have been ‘objectified,’ treated as property rather than as feeling, self-directed individuals…

From all of this we see that the liberation of animals, while a pressing and worthy goal in its own right, is not
of importance only to non-human animals. While people are no longer branded, inspected at auction or

9 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

displayed in zoos, subtler forms of oppression are still in operation which have their counterparts in animals’
slavery. Advances towards releasing animals from our dominion and control of their lives will also serve to
lessen the oppression of blacks and others who suffer under the weight of someone else’s power. By
eliminating the oppression of animals from the fabric of our culture, we begin to undermine some of the
psychological structures inherent in a society which seems to create and foster masters. With a philosophy of
universal respect for others’ lives, treating anyone – human or non-human – in a cruel manner begins to be
unthinkable.” – Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison

leave a comment
« Older

© On Nonhuman Slavery. Powered by WordPress and Manifest

On Nonhuman Slavery
About
Archives
Contribute
Resources

"We can see quite plainly that our present civilization is built on the exploitation of animals, just as past
civilisations were built on the exploitation of slaves." -Donald Watson

July 13, 2010

On Violence

10 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

Photograph by Donna Ferrato

“It is a mistake to see issues of human and animal exploitation as mutually exclusive. On the contrary, all
exploitation is inextricably intertwined. All exploitation is a manifestation of violence. All discrimination is a
manifestation of violence. As long as we tolerate violence of any sort, there will be violence of every sort.” –
Gary Francione

leave a comment

July 9, 2010

No One Is Free While Others Are Oppressed

“If we are serious about animal liberation, then we must work for the liberation of all animals, human and
nonhuman. If we are serious about feminism, then we must shun speciesism just as we shun sexism. No one is
free while others are oppressed. And, if we work together, understanding how seemingly different struggles
are related to one another, then someday we will all be free.” – Pattrice Jones

leave a comment

July 6, 2010

Liberty And Justice For Some

11 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

Elephant Journal asked its contributors to post our thoughts in honor of this holiday. Sure, the Fourth of July
is supposed to signify freedom. How many times have we been told that what separates America from ‘lesser’
countries is that we are free? Yet this idea of freedom only extends to humans, never non-human animals,
who feel pain and suffer for our pleasures.

I sit here thinking about the ten billion land animals that are confined, tortured and murdered in the name of
taste, tradition and selfishness for American diets. I think about the 150 million animals that are confined and
tortured in laboratories all over the country so Americans can have cosmetics, household cleaners, and
pharmaceutical drugs.

I think about elephants and tigers that are confined so that Americans can be entertained at circuses. How
many wild animals languish in zoos, no longer free? How many dolphins, seals and other sea animals are
imprisoned in marine parks across the country, ripped away from their families? How many horses are locked
in stables, raced until they collapse just to entertain human beings? Read the rest of this entry »

leave a comment

July 5, 2010

On Carnism

12 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

“Carnism allows people to eat animals without thinking about what they are doing or why. But just because
an ideology is so entrenched and widespread doesn’t mean it’s natural or true. It was once widely believed
that the earth was flat, women’s honorable position in life was in the home, serving men, and that black
African-Americans were suited to slavery.” – Katrina Fox

leave a comment

Cass Sunstein On Animal Use

“I believe that in the long-run, our willingness to subject animals to unjustified suffering will be seen as a
form of unconscionable barbarity—not the same as, but in many ways morally akin to, slavery and the mass
extermination of human beings.”

leave a comment

The Social Construction of Edible Bodies and Humans As Predators

13 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

By Carol J. Adams
Are we predators or are we not? In an attempt to see ourselves as natural beings, some argue that humans are
simply predators like some other animals. Vegetarianism is then seen to be unnatural while the carnivorism of
other animals is made paradigmatic. Animal rights is criticized “for it does not understand that one species
supporting or being supported by another is nature’s way of sustaining life” (Ahlers 1990, 433). The deeper
disanalogies with carnivorous animals remain unexamined because the notion of humans as predators is
consonant with the idea that we need to eat meat. In fact, carnivorism is true for only about 20 percent of
nonhuman animals. Can we really generalize from this experience and claim to know precisely what
“nature’s way” is, or can we extrapolate the role of humans according to this paradigm? Read the rest of this
entry »

leave a comment

July 4, 2010

Solutions to the “Unwanted”

14 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

Discarded chicks are suffocated, crushed or ground

alive

“…the production of milk and eggs involves as much cruelty and killing as meat production does: surplus
cockerels and calves, as well as spent hens and cows, have been slaughtered and otherwise brutally destroyed
through the ages. Historically, there have been two main solutions to the problem of unwanted bull calves:
club them to death or bleed them out slowly for a couple of days and then slaughter them for veal. The “veal”
calf was a “solution” to the surplus bulls of dairy farming for many centuries, long before 20th-century
factory farming. The male chicken of the egg industry cannot lay eggs, and he has not been genetically
manipulated to develop excess muscle tissue for profitable meat production, so the industry trashes him at
birth. Spent commercial dairy cows and laying hens endure agonizing days (four or more days) of
pre-transport starvation and long trips to the slaughterhouse because of their low market value. To be a
lacto-ovo vegetarian is not to wash one’s hands of misery and murder.” – Karen Davis, UPC

leave a comment

A Mere Personal Choice

“The decision to eat or not to eat animal products should not be regarded as a mere personal ‘food’ choice.

15 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

This perpetuates the view of animals as material objects, rather than as fellow creatures with precious lives of
their own. It hides the fact that in choosing to consume animal products one chooses a life based on slavery
and violence.” – Karen Davis, UPC

leave a comment

Manipulating the Female Animal

Colleen Patrick Goudreau explains the inherent exploitation of the female reproductive system in the dairy
and egg industries.

leave a comment

July 2, 2010

What Permeates Our Culture

16 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM
On Nonhuman Slavery http://www.nonhumanslavery.com/

“By viewing the experiences of animals – such as dogs and ‘milk cows’ – through the lens of human slavery,
we come to realize that master/slave relationships permeate our culture.” – Marjorie Spiegel

leave a comment
« Older
Newer »

© On Nonhuman Slavery. Powered by WordPress and Manifest

17 of 17 8/1/2010 8:08 PM