I am Absolutely LIVID! - Rocket River http://www.peta.org/AnimalLiberation/ http://www.peta.org/AnimalLiberation/display.asp What is the common link between all atrocities in our society's past? Shameful chapters of history, such as the African slave trade, the massacre and displacement of Native Americans, the oppression of women, and forced child labor, were the products of a dangerous belief that those with power have the right to abuse those without it: that might somehow does make right. Whether for profit, convenience, or just plain amusement, this supremacist attitude caused people as a society to tolerate, perpetuate, and indignantly defend outrageously cruel acts. Hindsight is 20/20. Most people today view slavery, child labor, and the oppression of women as wrong, but this change only came about because thoughtful people called for justice and fought oppression, even at great personal risk. Ota Benga was an African pygmy brought from the Belgian Congo in 1904 and held in the monkey house exhibit at the Bronx Zoo in a collection of humankind’s "evolutionary ancestors." Will future generations look back at ours with the same shame and horror we feel when we read about ships crammed with slaves or about the forced winter march of American Indians away from their homelands? An objective look reveals that our generation still operates in the same way. The only difference is that yesterday's victims—used and abused because they were "different" and powerless—are now of other species. Cruel actions that would cause a public outcry today—such as the use of children who had mental disabilities at New York's Willowbrook State Hospital in 1960s hepatitis experiments—are no longer tolerated because we accept that harming other humans simply because they are defenseless is reprehensible. Traveling circuses rarely display physically deformed men and women as "sideshow freaks" to be gawked at and ridiculed anymore because we now know that individuals deserve respect and consideration no matter how they measure up to the norm. Yet intelligent, social animals are still used in experiments, circus acts, and other abominations.
I'm confused. What are you livid about? Are you against exploitation of animals or are you against PETA?
Comparing animal suffering to human suffering.... Should we spark up the evolution threads?? Sorry -- PETA's been 'over the line' for quite a while. Their campaigns are designed to shock...why would i give them that satisfaction? nothing to see here...
I don't know about you guys, but I somehow don't think there is anything offensive for being called a tree-hugging peta-loving liberal. Although I am not one, I wouldn't mind that label at all if I were. Same goes for environmental wacko.
Like ourselves, all other living beings want to be happy. Love all living beings as one loves oneself.
Not sure PETA members are required to be vegetarians, but they are strongly encouraged to be so. In fact, they push for the Vegan lifestyle too. I think you'd be pushing it to call them hypocrites. Kooks might be more on the mark. Oh why couldn't they stay with the naked supermodel campaigns????
an animal is an animal....lets keep it that way.......I personally don't believe in mistreating them(such as force feeding)...BUT if someone wants to mistreat them i would prefer he mistreat an animal rather than another human being....comparing the mistreatment of humans to animals is ridiculous….we are different from any other living thing on this planet….we just don’t act like it sometimes also in the case of testing....what would you rather pick.....a few thousand dead mice/monkeys...or a thousand dead humans........i thought so....
Well, being probably one of the only vegetarians on this board I'll probably be in the minority on this one. I don't think this is offensive at all. The rhetorical strategy of this campaign is to try to expose the bias that allows people to treat animals one way and people the other. This may or may not set off a bunch of flames from bigtexx et. al, but what do I care. Leaders in the animal rights movement, Chompsky, Regan, etc., have often argued that the reason we continue to treat animals so cruelly is because of a form of discrimination called "speciesism." Just as racism and sexism allow us to categorically place one group above another because of a perceived moral/cultural/religious superiority. Colonials would look at the odd features, dark-skin, and seemingly "uncivilized" ways of people living in Africa and thought that their more advanced culture gave them the right to repress these "savages." Men used to think women were inherently physically frail, irrational, and prone to hormonal impulses. So they did ridicilous things such as prevent them from voting, the marathon was not a woman's event at the Olympics until 1984 because people didn't believe a woman could survive that distance. What allowed these people to be exploited or repressed, an irrational belief that they were categorically inferior or somehow different. People who support animal rights believe that now we are irrationally denying moral status to animals because of the same biases. Right now animals are kept in cramped quarters filled with excrement, pumped full of hormones, and subjected to a whole litany of cruelties. I don't fell like going into all of them but this link should work: HTML: http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=mym2002 We would all be shocked disgusted and appalled if human babies were having their throats slit while they were still alive or being scalded until all their hair fell out yet we don't care when this happens to cows, pigs, or chickens. Why? It is because we don't think that animals enjoy the same moral status as human beings. That because a cow is not a part of our culture or community, much like pygmies were not a part of the white American culture, that we can treat them as we please. The fact that you are so offended by this add is only proof that your point of view is what the campaign is indicitng? Why do you think it's so offensive that they liken animal suffering to human suffering? Of course there are differences between animal and human suffering. For example, the more developed cognitive processes and capacity for self-reflection adds another dimension to their suffering. But, the truth is, when you cut a cow, it hurts that cow just like it hurts a human being. When you overfeed a pig until it's legs break it hurts just like it does a human. But we extend protection to a human and not to an animal because we believe we are superior to animals and free to do whatever we want to them. People usually react to viscerally to these kinds of campaigns because it indicts their behavior and if it's true it would make them part of an atrocity. Before you just fly off the handle, try to articulate a reason why there is such a difference between the suffering these animals undergo and the suffering human beings have undergone.
Why is PLANT discrimination ok with you guys then? Are they not alive? Maybe Germs and Bacteria should be in the Mix as well. Just because they don't scream or 'have faces' doesn't mean that they should be allowed to be 'mistreated' I'm not for the mistreatment of animals but Equating the torture and death of people to that of animals is offensive to the extreme. I demeans and cheapens these people's death Rocket River I hate peta now more than the torturers
Sorry Bullard....there are certain comparisons that you just don't make...even if you can make a theoretical connection. Slavery and the treatment of animals. It just ain't gonna fly. PETA did a campaign a while ago where they compared pig farming to the hollocast. They had to withdraw it pretty quick. Even vegetarians gotta eat crow once in a while.
