What is Speciesism?

Belief that moral status should be based on species designation

Why does this matter to me?
Because this plays a major role in your life- what you eat, how you vote
and how you view the world.
Richard Ryder- coined the term speciesism in 1970 at Oxford
What this Class will cover (2 main ideas) (comparisons not demeaning of
particularity of experiences- alex hartmans activism comparing holocaust to
factory farming or slavery to forced animal servitude- we need to to break preconceived notions, epistemological bubbles- (episteme- greek for knowledge)
logos- study of knowledge- ex. Live in a world where cows/pigs/chickens are
pets, unthinkable to eat them, but we live off cats and dogs- this is arbitrary

Thats a link
Lisa Kemmerer 2011 (associate professor of philosophy and religions at Montana State University
Billings Introduction to in Sister Species: Women, Animals, And Social Justice, pg. 28-30)

Overtly associating women with nonhuman animals, as I have just done, is

unsettling to many. Such association is viewed as offering a "more substantial
threat to women than identification with nature" (Scholtmeijer 233), perhaps
because nature is recognized as noble and magnificent, while nonhuman ani- mals
especially farmed animalsare viewed as expendable propertydumb and
despicable. "The suggestion that the otherness of nonhuman animals can
inform the otherness of women, therefore, appears to be counterproductive,
to pull women down into a condition of defeat along with the animals"
(Scholtmeijer 234). Consequently, feminists have too often bolstered the "otherness" of nonhumans in the hopes of extricating women from this ignoble
association, liberating "white women and people of color from the onerous
equation with animals and otherness," while leaving nonhuman animals to remain
as exploitable "other" {Scholtmeijer 257; Adams, "Feminist" 204). (I experienced
this type ofreaction from feminists at a conference in Stony Brook University. At
the time, I did not understand their aggressive objections to identifying the
links between the oppression of women and the oppression of female farmed
animals.) By distancing themselves from other exploited females, such
feminists endeavor to pass exploitation on to other exploited individuals,
those whom they perceive as being yet lower on the hierarchical ladder
(Kappeler 335). Such indifference to the exploitation of those whom they
perceive as lesser mirrors the larger culture of hierarchy and oppression. In
so behaving, these feminists "mirror patriarchal oppressors" (Dunayer,
"Sexist" 19). Women, including feminists or ecofeminists, who prefer to ignore
that nonhuman animals who are exploited for their reproductive abilities are
oppressed females "closely resemble men who prefer to ignore that women are
human" (Dunayer 19). Women who prefer not to recognize a cow as an
objectified female also re-semble early feminists who focus exclusively on
white, middle-class women. Feminists who "engage in this kind of denial,
[who] support and participate in the oppression of the less powerful" in
hopes of elevating themselves, are "not only hypocritical" but also engage in
a "profound betrayal of [feminism's] deepest commitments" (Adams and

Donovan, "Introduction" 8). To avoid such pitfalls, in light oflinked oppressions,

feminists and ecofeminists "must specifically address the oppression of the
nonhuman animals with whom we share the planet. In failing to do so," activists
and tlieorists adopt "the sort of exclusionary theorizing" that they ostensibly reject
{Gruen 61). For those who seek freedom "from violation by the powerfulpower
and privilege must not be more widely shared, they must be radically dismantled"
(Kappeler 335). Instead of feeding nonhuman individuals to the patriarchal
monster in the hopes of saving themselves, women must turn the monster
away.

A refutation (a) and genealogy (b) of the arguments for Speciesism

Genealogy- a self-reflective tracing of history to try and look beyond
ideologies we might currently hold.
Ideology forms because knowledge is built on power. Genealogy helps us
avoid that. (ex. Scientific Racism/Sexism)
Michel Foucault- cool guy, French philosopher, developed idea of
genealogy (ex. hysteria)
2) Speciesism as foundational to other humanisms.
..the claim to humanity and human rights will never succeed until it has
reckoned with the otherness of nonhuman life forms
the rights of human beings are in turn based in the lack of rights in the
animals.

Cary Wolfe in Animal Rites: American Culture, the

Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory
Nowhere is patriarchys iron fist as naked in the oppression of animals,
which serves as the model and training ground for all other forms of
oppression.
(Aviva Cantor; quoted by Charles Patterson in The Eternal
Treblinka)
Arguments for Speciesism (5)
Evolutionary Theory- the idea that humans are the pinnacle of
evolution, the most evolved being, usually thought of historically as
European white male
Less intelligent or cognitively aware beings should not have rights-

Picture chimp brain vs. human brain- that extra few ounces is the
moral difference kek

What about Down Syndrome or other mental disabilities? Animals

are also very intelligent and similar to humans- get to that in a
slide.

Missing Traits
Experience
Humane argument
Animals need to be controlled

1a. An Evolutionary Misinterpretation

Claim: Humans are the final stage in evolution

Species designations do exist, (cant reproduce with each other/different
skills) but the idea of higher and lower species does not exist empirically
(Darwin proves)
People misunderstand (as what happened with early 20th century
scientists Darwins theory of evolution to argue that evolution
occurred in stages, from lower to higher, and that humans were the
pinnacle of evolution, and that white men were the most evolved of
all the races (this will be important later). However, evolution is not
linear or hierarchical
Species, (as currently used) is a social construction used to justify
how we treat animals (but we arent consistent with this!)- how we
treat pets vs. animals we eat
Next slide pictures
More accurate view of evolution is as random, non-linear, nonhierarchical, progression due to particular pressures
This means that development of different skills does not make one
species any better than any other.
Why value intelligence over something like memory (Chimps/sea
lions), smell (dogs), or strength (chimps)
Chimps visual memory Kyoto University study, a bunch of
chimps were shown randomly scattered numbers on a computer
screen. The numbers were then covered and the subjects were
required to identify the position of each number in order
Scientists attribute this impressive display of working memory
to "eidetic imagery," or what is commonly known as
photographic memory. chimps seem to have a really good
visual memory -- they can remember details of an image even
if they just glimpsed it for a couple of seconds.
Smells- dog- obvious
Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz were able
to teach a sea lion named Rio the concept of "sameness" by
showing Rio a symbol and then showing her one card with the
same symbol and one with a different one. Common
experiment used on children with autism- Temple Grandin
animal rights activist/autistic activist that made numerous
breakthroughs in animal psychology- strong relation between
cows brains and that of autistic humans. Anyway, After 10
freaking years, Rio was given a similar test, only this time it
used numbers and letters instead of symbols. She was able to
identify the numbers and letters that were the same, despite the
fact that she had not performed the trick again at any point in
the last decade. This is the longest known retention period of
any animal species, and is all the more impressive due to the

25-year lifespan of the sea lion. We'll see how well you
remember the things you learned at 10 when you turn 50.
Strengths chimpanzees have been shown to be about four times
as strong as humans comparable in size, according to
evolutionary biologist Alan Walker, formerly of Pennsylvania
State University.

Even within framework of intelligence/culture first it doesnt make

sense to argue that Less intelligent or cognitively aware beings should
not have rights- Picture chimp brain vs. human brain- that extra few
ounces is the moral difference kek
What about Down Syndrome or other mental disabilities?
Math- monkeys can use it,
Culture?- chimps and other land mammals have that too, pass on
traditions and stories- even if less complex languages/understanding
than English- Elephants can speak English, Dolphins sleep-talk (and
have nightmares), Octopi build houses, pigeons have been taught to
gamble and several have developed addictions, Cows develop best
friends and cry when their friend is taken into the slaughterhouse.
Even if you think rationality moral reasoning is the most
important difference- not a reason to be a speciesist- Richard
Ryder- Humans are definitely superior to animals, not equal at all in
terms of moral reasoning- but thats why we ought to treat them betterwe have higher degree of moral choice, rationality- these things
command us to respect other life forms
1b. Evolutionism as Ideology
Those whose know the races realize that the average white man is
stronger of limb, fleeter of foot, clearer of eye, than the average yellow
or red or black.
William McGhee in 1899
the mental inferiority of the negro to the white or yellow races is a
fact. The growth of the brain is .arrested by the premature closing of
the cranial structures and lateral pressure of the frontal bone.
Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1911
The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one
rules, and the other is ruled.
Aristotle
: McGhee kidnapped pygmies from Africa. called (Ota Benga 1906) the
missing link, the lord of the savage- was housed in the bronx zoo and you
could buy a photo for 25 cents. He killed himself when finally freed from the
zoo.
Belgium girl in 1958- put in human zoo- was fed bananas as if she was a
monkey
The evolutionary argument for racism has largely been rejected today, but this
misinterpretation still exists in speciesism, arguing that humans are higher
than nonhumans.

Evolutionary Theory
Missing Traits
Experience
Humane argument

MISSING TRAITS
Almost all isms have been justified by claiming to possess a trait that
entitled one to superior status
Main traits are intelligence, language and a soul
Remember Darwin- Intelligence is not inherently the best category and that
standard isnt equally applied
Mental disabilities etc.

Language prairie dogs, bees, squid, birds, bats, monkeys, whales possess
complex languages
Almost all animal communications meet the 13 human conditions to be
considered languages Why do we assume animals dont have language?
Because we put them in cages, we electrify them, we shave their
bodies, we take them from their natural habitat and hurt them when
they dont obey- they just show fear- humans go mute under
conditions of extreme abuse too. When you observe their natural
habitat without being invasive- animals have extremely complex
languages.
Also science is speciesist!- it has a preconceived notions of animals as
dumb beasts.

(Slobodchikoff in Chasing Dr. Dolittle)

Soul- Depends on who you ask
Ex. St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thomas Aquinas both believed animals have
souls and there is an ongoing debate over whether or not animals go to heaven
And this standard is arbitrary
Ex. George Whitefield, Sparked the Great Awakening of American Protestant
Evangelicalism- argued that black people could be enslaved because they did
not have souls.
History of Intelligence Argument
Aristotle- The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities; we
should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.
Nietzsche- When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually
something wrong with her sexual organs.
Black people were called irrational and this was as a reason to continue
protective custody (slavery) and to justify their virtually limitless abuse.
(Speigel, 25)
The only qualification individuals should need to make wrong for us to
dominate their lives is that they possess life. (Speigel)
In other words, different traits should be irrelevant

Emotions/Pain
are the same as ours! Difference is not in type but degree. (Darwin)
Ethologists have determined (and common sense tells us) that their
distress is huge.
Antebellum racists made a similar claim that black people could not
love, but only feel animal lust. Some even said that black people felt
little or no pain (A common argument used against animal rights)
(Speigel, 65)
Evolutionary Theory
Humans as superior
Missing Traits
Degree of experience
Humane argument (better life argument and animal testing)
Better life argument
[The abolition of the slave trade] would be extreme cruelty to the
African savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre, or
intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces them into a
much happier state of life.- James Boswell, (1740-1795)
In the eighteenth century it was widely argued that domestication was
good for animals; it civilized them and increased their numbers: we
multiply life sensation and enjoyment.- Keith Thomas in Man and the
Natural World quoting Benjamin Rush (1746-1813)
Continues today with humane meat, free-range chickens, etc.
Images that say organic cotton from free-range slaves and onion image
on how we humanely kill animals
Animal Testing
most animal experiments not relevant to human health and do not contribute
to medical advances.
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
92% of drugs approved via animal testing fail in human testing (and out of the
8% that work most are rejected for side effects unique to humans)
FDA (Food and Drug Administration)
Over half (54%) of side effects arent found by animal tests
(Clin Pharmacol)
As if that wasnt bad enough 75% of the side effects identified (of
the 46% from above) are meaningless/dont happen in humans
[AP Fletcher in Proc. R. Soc. Med journal]
Basically- if animal testing says theres a risk, its more likely there is
none at all, if animal testing says there isnt a risk, its more likely that
there will be one
Why?
Physiological reactions to drugs vary enormously from species
to species. Penicillin kills guinea pigs but is inactive in rabbits;
aspirin kills cats and causes birth defects in rats, mice, guinea

pigs, dogs, and monkeys; and morphine, a depressant in

humans, stimulates goats, cats, and horses. Further, animals in
laboratories typically display behavior indicating extreme
psychological distress, and experimenters acknowledge that the
use of these stressed-out animals jeopardizes the validity of the
data produced. Animals cannot explain that they feel depressed,
suicidal, blurred vision or aching joints to humans. Or
sometimes they just cant get side effects like humans do- for
example- rats dont have spleens- any side effects for spleens

Harms Testing does

Only one law on the books that deals with lab animalsthe
Animal Welfare Actit allows animals to be burned, shocked,
poisoned, isolated, starved, forcibly restrained, addicted to
drugs, and brain-damaged. No experiment, no matter how
painful or trivial, is prohibited and pain-killers are not required.
Even you dont have to use of animals and alternatives are
available, the law does not require that they be usedand often
they arent.
Also the Act specifically excludes rats, mice, birds and coldblooded animals, more than 95 percent of the animals used in
laboratories are not subject to the minimal protections provided
by federal laws.
There are easy alternatives
Human clinical and epidemiological studies, human tissue- and
cell-based research methods, cadavers, sophisticated highfidelity human patient simulators and computational models are
more reliable, more precise, less expensive, and more humane
than animal experiments.
Progressive scientists have used human brain cells to develop a
model micro-organs, which can be used to study tumors, as
well as artificial skin and bone marrow.
We can now test irritancy on protein membranes, produce and
test vaccines using human tissues, and perform pregnancy tests
using blood samples instead of killing rabbits.
Animal experiments dont persist because they are the best
science, they persist because of experimenters personal biases
and archaic traditions.
History of Testing Logic
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1932-1972)
The longest involuntary medical experiment on human beings in
history performed on poor black people
Were never told they were being given syphilis
Never gave them post-study treatment, just let many of them die
from related complications
Guatamala in 2010

U.S. did the same exact thing except now with both syphilis and
gonorrhea to prisoners, mental health patients and soldiers.
Infected 700 people without their knowledge
Reasoned that the benefit to humankind was more important
than the ethical flaws (sneaky exclusion of the subjects from
the category of human)
Animals are dangerous arg

After Reconstruction there was a fear of the mad dog ex-slave, who
had to be suppressed to protect white women: this led to the formation
of the KKK (similar to the anti-pitbull movement)
The threat of these attacks is socially constructed. (not real) and in fact
go the other way
Movie poster of a movie fro 1915 called regeneration

Speciesim as foundational to other -isms

Jacques Derrida, rebellious bad boy of philosophy, extremely
important French philosopher, used to have a cool mustache but got rid
of it.
- argued that normalization of violence allowed for the Noncriminal
Putting to Death of the Other- basically that it always gives us a way
to call something/someone a non-human, and because we can kill
nonhumans, we can kill that thing weve labeled- called
subhumanization logic
Modern Racism- Example of Richard Sherman Tweets that compare Sherman to an animal signal a power
fundamental to racism- to mark Black people as not-human. Racism
has the ability to take away His Human card so that killing him
doesnt matter.
Happens in other things (Guantanamo etc) Ex. Alex Hershaft. born in Poland in 1934

and survived the Warsaw Ghetto before being liberated, along with my mother,
by the Allies. I organized for social justice causes in Israel and the US, worked on
animal farms while in college, earned a PhD in chemistry, and ultimately decided
to devote my life to animal rights and veganism, which I have done for nearly 40
years (since 1976). My first hand experience with animal farming was
instrumental. I noted the many similarities between how the Nazis treated us
and how we treat animals, especially those raised for food. Among these are the
use of cattle cars for transport and crude wood crates for housing, the cruel
treatment and deception about impending slaughter, the processing efficiency
and emotional detachments of the perpetrators, and the piles of assorted body
parts - mute testimonials to the victims they were once a part of.

The split in the minds of racists (the divide between the idea of
Blackness as a bad thing and the idea of Whiteness as a good thing- is
based on the original divide of the human/animal divide)- because,
Malaklou- set the stage for this distinction, the understanding of a

community (humans) that needs to be policed and distanced from in

order to be protected from danger/outsiders (animals, nonhumans) has
cemented in our minds an understanding of commonality built on
exclusion
Shadee Malaklou Understanding anti-Black racism as speciesism: Reflection on Richard Shermans affective excess and the
Twitterverses response
Slavery
it seems more than coincidental that the region that yields first
agriculture, (the Middle East), is the same one that yields the first
evidence of slavery.
Dr. Charles Patterson in The Eternal Treblinka
slavery was little more than the extension of domestication to
humans. the enslavement of animals served as the model and
inspiration for the enslavement of humans
Dr. Charles Patterson in The Eternal Treblinka
Sexism
The seuxal subjugation of women was modeled after the
domestication of animals. The domestication of women followed the
initiation of animal keeping, men began to control womens
reproductive capacity, enforcing sexual repression.
Elizabeth Fisher, quoted by Dr. Charles Patterson in The
Eternal Treblinka
The hierarchical positioning of human over animal intensified
human cruelty and laid the foundation for human slavery. humans
first made friends with animals and then killed them. To do so, they
had to kill some sensitivity in themselves.
Elizabeth Fisher, quoted by Dr. Charles Patterson in The
Eternal Treblinka
Finally, Why is this important?
Unnecessary Suffering All animals feel pain, suffer when they are killed no matter what
45 BILLION land animals, 85 billion marine animals killed for food;
39 billion more in fashion/cosmetic industries Total of 169 billion animals in just those two industries- millions more
in other things like hunting, breeding trade etc.

-Dr. Steven Best (Philosopher/Professor at UTexas)

Because Animals and Humans dont deserve the horrors of speciesism
And we can do things to stop that- Im not just talking about veganism
but full disclosure (I am) but rather just to know about this issue.
Awareness is really important because people dont question things
like speciesism because they take it for granted- they are born in it,
they are always told not to question it
Pig and cow
Pig in lil clothes
Bby from 2-6 months with his tongue out

Nonhuman emotions: love, emotional pain, fear, hope, joy, sadness,

shame, grief, sorrow, elation, moodiness, anger. Etc. (Reminder- we
are animals too.)
Difference is not in type but degree (degree of intelligence,
degree of speed, degree of emotion).
This goes both ways! Some animals may feel more deeply
than us!- ex. Dogs, cows, elephants, are more intense in their
attachments to humans and each other than we are to them or to
other humans. Brain size =/ emotional fulfillment
Ex. Mother cows and their calves cry out when they are
separated from each other- exactly the same as what humans
would do.
Pain