January
2005
Trying
to Walk Before We Can Crawl
Book Review by Norm Phelps
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Speciesism by Joan Dunayer (Derwood, Maryland: Ryce
Publishing, 2004). $18.95 paperback. 204 pages.
The publication in 2001 of Animal Equality: Language and Liberation established
Joan Dunayer as an important new voice in the animal rights movement.
In it, she deconstructed the language that we use to talk about animals,
exposing not just the bias that is built into our speech, but the profoundly
unjust power relationships that our speech both reflects and supports.
There ought to be, Dunayer argued, an absolute moral equality between
human and nonhuman animals, and this equality should be reflected in
our language, which should not have one set of terms for human animals
and another for nonhuman. If we “eat,” other animals should
also “eat,” not “feed.” We should speak of animals
as “he” or “she” rather than “it.” We
should not refer to “animal agriculture,” but to “food
industry enslavement,” and so on.
In Speciesism Dunayer continues to develop the Leitmotiv of
her earlier book: the need for an intellectually consistent ethic of
moral equality
for all sentient
beings. As she puts it, “Sentience, defined as any capacity to experience,
is the only logical and fair basis for rights. In nonspeciesist philosophy, all
sentient beings have rights. What’s more, all sentient beings are equal… Any
needless harm to nonhumans should be viewed with the same disapproval as comparable
harm to humans… Am I saying that a firefly is as fully entitled to moral
consideration as a rabbit or a bonobo? Yes. Am I saying that a spider has as
much right to life as an egret or a human? Yes. I see no logically consistent
reason to say otherwise.”
Not surprisingly, Dunayer has no patience for arguments that would condition
some rights (e.g. the right to life) on the ability to anticipate future pleasures
(Peter Singer), a sophisticated sense of self (being “the subject of a
life,” as Tom Regan phrases it), the ability to achieve a certain score
on tests that measure humanlike mental capacities (Steven Wise), or similar criteria
modeled on human abilities. These arguments she demolishes with plain language
and devastating logic. Speciesism is a cogent, consistent, elegant statement
of the full-bore animal rights position that categorically rejects any compromise
with “welfarism.”
Reality Check
Unfortunately, what is elegant in theory can become hopelessly tangled upon contact
with reality. And when Dunayer applies her theory to the real world, what began
as a clarion call for animal rights degenerates into an attack upon dedicated
activists whose campaigns do not meet her standard for ideological purity.
A typical example of Dunayer’s approach is her criticism of three of the
country’s most active and effective animal rights organizations—United
Poultry Concerns (UPC), Compassion over Killing (COK), and People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals (PETA)—for campaigning on behalf of “welfarist” reforms,
including expansion of the Animal Welfare Act and the Humane Methods of Slaughter
Act. “If I were in a Nazi concentration camp,” she says, “and
someone on the outside asked me, ‘Do you want me to work for better living
conditions, more-humane deaths in the gas chambers, or the liberation of all
concentration camps?’ I’d answer ‘Liberation.’ …I’d
regard any focus on better living conditions and more-‘humane’ deaths
as immoral.”
If the focus were only on better living conditions and more humane deaths, I
would agree. That would be immoral. But UPC, COK, and PETA carry on vigorous
campaigns against all animal exploitation and in support of a vegan society in
tandem with their campaigns for humane reforms. It is this two-pronged approach—with
its simultaneous, and not entirely consistent, emphases on both liberation and
reform—that is critical to success in the real world in which animals are
suffering and being killed. Dunayer’s Nazi concentration camp illustration
is based on the unstated assumption that animal liberation can be achieved within
a fairly near time frame. But since it clearly cannot be, refusing to work for
better living conditions and less painful and terrifying deaths amounts to a
betrayal of the animals whom we are professing to help. We must resist the temptation
to sacrifice real-world results on the altar of an ivory-tower consistency because
what we are really sacrificing is the animals. (In the interests of full disclosure,
Karen Davis of UPC, Paul Shapiro of COK, and Bruce Friedrich of PETA, all of
whom Dunayer takes issue with by name, are friends of mine. Their record of dedicated
and effective advocacy on behalf of animal rights is, however, well known throughout
the animal rights movement and beyond.)
A Faith-Based Initiative
Like religious fundamentalists, Joan Dunayer believes that she has found the
only path to salvation and that all who do not agree with her are giving aid
and comfort to the enemy. And in fact, her faith that rigid adherence to a logically
consistent theory is the sole route to liberation has something of the aura of
religious zealotry about it. And like fundamentalist religion, her faith is not
empirically based. There is absolutely no evidence to support Dunayer’s
claim that working for “welfarist” reforms retards liberation. Historically,
the notion that the road to social change lies in strict submission to an elegant
orthodoxy has always led, not to the utopia that was promised, but to failure,
disaster, or both. Witness the Puritan Revolution of 1640, the French Revolution
of 1789, and the appallingly brutal communist experiments of the 20th century.
Real improvement has always come from reformers who were able to keep their eyes
upon the prize, as the saying goes, while moving toward it one inconsistent step
at a time.
Emerson reminded us that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
minds.” As Joan Dunayer demonstrates, it can also be a trap for intelligent
and expansive minds. Speciesism is an important book, and a great deal of what
it has to say is profound and penetrating. But Dunayer’s insistence that
animal activists’ campaigns must pass a test of ideological purity is not
only divisive at a time when we all need to support each others’ efforts,
it is dangerous. We have to crawl before we can walk. Joan Dunayer is right when
she says our society should walk. And in time it will. But criticizing activists
for trying to teach the American public to crawl delays, rather than hastens,
the day that we all long for. That is too high a price to pay for theoretical
consistency.
Norm Phelps is the author of The Great Compassion:
Buddhism and Animal Rights (Lantern Books, 2004) and The Dominion of
Love:
Animal Rights According to the Bible (Lantern Books, 2002). He is a contributing
writer at Satya.
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