Animal Rights Is (Still) a Mainstream Movement

"Cage-free" hen rescued by Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary

I published this a year ago Thursday at The Previous Blog. And when Karen Davis spoke once again last night at AR2010 about the wrongness of our apologizing for our stances, compassion, and advocacy, I thought of this post. It was well received a year ago, and I’ve already been needing to slowly republish or archive my past more substantive posts in this space, so this feels like a fitting time to present it again. I expect that some parts will now take on new meaning for readers who caught the post the first time around, given what continued unfolding fairly obviously in the months that followed its publication and given my eventual move from there to here — indeed, there are parts that are painful to read now – but the core message is still valid, independent of what was unfolding in my personal experiences at the time.

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During a recent conversation about, among other things, the hesitance of some organizations or movements to be associated with animal rights, it was remarked that surely I must recognize how “radical” and “extreme” my cause is. The person who made the remark is a friend and colleague who, although not completely on board with animal rights yet, gets it more than most and is sincerely respectful of both the movement and me, and he said it not in a critical or snide way, but casually, as a matter of fact and with the expectation that I would readily agree. But I didn’t. I paused. And I realized that in recent months, I’ve been doing a disservice to my own cause–and to the animals–by not more openly challenging people when they speak about the movement in such terms, by feeling like I have to accept, and work within the confines of, how others perceive animal rights. But I don’t have to, and I shouldn’t. We don’t have to; we shouldn’t.

I’ve known and acknowledged out loud from the time I was contracted to write [The Previous Blog] that my cause is the “fringe” cause here–in terms of most people’s perception of it, that is. Animal rights–true animal rights, not animal welfare–is a philosophy supported by only a minority of even the progressive population. So I know that many of this site’s visitors and members do not support animal rights; naturally, nor do all the team members. And I have at times taken my consciousness of that too far, into self-consciousness, not just in the context of this site, but in everyday life.

Like many other animal advocates, I’ve at times allowed myself to expect, accept, or tolerate certain responses to my advocacy–some loud and intentional, some quieter and unintentional, and some just snide–because of that “fringe” status, when I should have been challenging that status. I’ve allowed myself to stipulate to things I don’t really believe. With a “well, I know most people think it’s extreme” caveat attached to everything, I’ve at times resigned myself to situations, conversations, or compromises to which I would never expect an activist for another movement–certainly not an activist for another set of exploited, suffering beings–to resign. And this became ever clearer in a discussion with yet another friend, a friend who works for human rights while also serving as an animal advocate in her own personal ways–and who sternly told me that what I was acquiescing to in my language and in my expectations was wrong, who made me listen to myself and think.

It reminds me of something Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns has written about and what she spoke about at the Animal Rights 2008 National Conference: Stop apologizing, she says. Stop qualifying. Stop beginning our conversations with “I know it seems silly, but…” and “I know it seems extreme, but…” Why? Because it’s not silly or crazy. It’s not extreme or radical (at least not in the way many people use that latter word). And qualifying our positions with the “rhetoric of apology” weakens them.

Animal rights is mainstream. Animal rights, at its heart, is the most unextreme philosophy I can imagine. It is about nonviolence. It is about compassion. It is about not harming and not causing suffering and not killing when we don’t have to. That’s it. It is really, truly that simple. Indeed, perhaps it is even that simplicity that causes so many to mock the animal rights movement or dismiss it as silly or radical–because if they can marginalize it, they don’t have to acknowledge the simplicity of it or truly ask and answer why they don’t support it too.

And when exploiting, imposing suffering on, and killing our fellow animals (our fellow, kindred animals, not unfeeling, unthinking robots) is completely unnecessary for the overwhelming majority of people who support such exploitation, suffering, and killing–when none of that is truly required for a full, meaningful, healthy, enjoyable life–how does anyone justify not supporting animal rights? When killing is a choice–when there is a clear choice between a philosophy of nonviolence and a philosophy of killing for personal pleasures (such as taste)–how can anyone consider that philosophy of nonviolence to be “extreme” or “radical”? If we’re going to question or even demean a choice, shouldn’t it be the choice to exploit and kill for convenience and pleasure?

Animal rights and veganism are merely a consistent manifestation of values nearly everyone purports to hold. When there is a choice between (1) nonviolence and compassion and (2) exploitation and killing, animal rights simply asks that you choose nonviolent compassion. Others’–other individuals, movements, and organizations’–perception and definition of animal rights as extreme or radical because of their personal discomfort with the movement and the sometimes-difficult questions and changes it calls on them to contemplate does not make animal rights extreme. The qualities others wish to attribute to animal rights are not qualities to which the animal rights movement must stipulate. I do not accept. We do not accept.

If compassion and nonviolence are not mainstream values, it is a sad world. If an individual’s choice to extend compassion in ways that, for example, contribute far less to mass suffering and death, contribute far less to environmental destruction and global warming, contribute far less to the problem of world hunger, and contribute far less to myriad health problems is extreme, we need to reconsider the definition of that word. And if a movement advocating all this is radical, other “mainstream” movements calling for reforms and equalities far more involved than simple nonviolence must be just outrageous.

The sheer magnitude of death and suffering that humans yearly, daily, hourly, every second choose to inflict on their fellow feeling, thinking animals is unlike anything being experienced by the humans of this planet. The physical and mental abuse, the suffering, and the death are grand-scale and constant, and that deserves as much attention as any other contemporary issue or cause. There’s no excuse–none–for mocking animal rights, for patronizing those who fight for animal rights, for dismissing animals’ plight, or for marginalizing animals’ suffering or judging all animal issues to be inherently less important than human issues. Animal rights deserve and mandate a place at the table–at the literal dinner table, in conversations with friends and family, in political conversations, in places of worship, in schools, and yes, here at Eh.eh.

Animal rights is mainstream. The mainstream just doesn’t want to acknowledge that.

Photo by Deb Durant of Invisible Voices: Charlotte, who was supposed to become veal so that humans could drink her mother’s milk, but who found sanctuary at Poplar Spring instead