For those of you unfamiliar with PETA's latest antics, they have launched a new viral video campaign called State of the Union UNDRESS (man, are they clever) where a woman strips while discussing animal issues. It's cut with pictures of the State of the Union Address, so there are senators clapping along as the woman removes garments.
I know PETA has been doing the "I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur" Campaign for years, but this is probably the most blatant form of female exploitation to promote their animal welfare agenda. The url is basically set up like a porn site.
In my opinion, all this campaign amounts to is substituting one form of exploitation for another: they're trying to lessen the commodification of animals by commodifying women. I suppose the justification is that these women are choosing to be exploited (and the scale of exploitation is vastly different. Women aren't routinely executed, at least in the developed world). But, as Victor Schonfeld points out in his essay on animal activism, imagine a human rights organization stooping so low.
And furthermore, it's just... a bad campaign. Yes, it gets attention, but it doesn't make anyone seriously consider the systematic exploitation of animals, or their position as chattel property. These campaigns disrespect women, they disrespect animals and they disrespect their viewing audience.
The point PETA conveniently misses (convenient from a fundraising perspective) is that all exploitation is related.
In Prof. Gary Francione's recent podcast, he talks about the connection between the exploitation of animals and that of women. He says that in either case, we don't focus on the person who is being exploited, but rather the "piece of meat" we wish to consume. In the case of animals, it's the back bacon or the lamb chop. In the case of women, it's whichever body part the viewer fetishizes. In both cases, the consumer creates an "it" out of a "he" or "she.".
Prof. Roger Yates takes this a step further. In his podcast on what he calls Dehumanizing Processes, he argues our ability to exploit other humans is made easier by the fact that we view non-human animals as a lower group, worthy of death and suffering for largely trivial trivial human uses. By having the other category--"animals"--we can effectively move Jews, blacks, immigrants, natives and, of course, women into the lower category whenever we wish to exploit them.
He cites numerous examples in which different types of exploited people were referred to in non-human terms to justify their subjugation (ie. "women are prey, men are predators," "Jews are rats," "natives are savages," etc.) He also cites several examples where language used by rapists, or soldiers engaged in war is almost identical to that of slaughterhouse workers.
Yates postulates that if we did not have another category to put other sentient beings into--a category we see as deserving of suffering and death for our own fairly frivolous desires--it would be much harder to exploit any being. Of course, we don't need the other category to treat other groups in such a way, but it certainly makes it easier to justify.
It would certainly seem some dehumanization is necessary for exploitation. Few among us would be okay with our own mother, sister or significant other in pornographic materials; similarly, neither would we be okay with our pets being slaughtered as food (even though pigs are actually smarter than dogs and, by many accounts, equally conversant).
Of course, the obvious flaw to all of this is that we are all animals. The second we stop seeing other races, sexes and species as somehow separate from us, and recognize that their experiences are fundamentally similar to ours, is the second we can advance the welfare of all of us*.
"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."
-Leo Tolstoy
Author, War and Peace
*I feel I should probably add that while I understand that non-human animals are fundamentally different than humans, I don't see that as significant from a moral perspective. Similarly to how we wouldn't discriminate based on intelligence within our own species, we should not discriminate animals for their perceived inferiority. We all experience the world in basically the same way and we all should consider that moving forward--PETA included.
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