Vegans Against PETA

Don't befriend sociopaths

2010-07-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

Holy fucking hell, it's like I ate a poison apple and fell asleep for....well, however long you fall asleep when you eat a poison apple in those fairy tales. I guess in my case, two months. And luckily, I didn't even have to have some schmalzy prince come and wake me up with a kiss. Victory!

Anyhow, I apologize for my crappy posting record lately -- shit's been crazy, plus I had a minor crisis last summer when it turned out I'd made friends with a sociopath. Better yet, she was somewhat active in the animal rights movement, so it lessened my enthusiasm for this blog considerably, and in the meantime I got involved in other activities, which means I now have even LESS time than I did before. I guess the moral of this story is don't make friends with sociopaths, and don't expect a better posting record from me. Ha. Now I sound like a total asshole.

Also, I absolutely have to share this with y'all -- it's Defensive Omnivore Bingo (I found it because one of the spaces links here). If you're not familiar with this phenomenon, just look at it and imagine yourself putting down bingo chips as you converse with an omnivore and they share their vast knowledge of veganism with you. Trust me, you've totally had this conversation before. The cards should probably be called Déjà Vu Bingo. Earlier great bingo cards in this vein include White Liberal Bingo and Anti-Feminist Bingo. Actually, if you go over to Cara's place, she's got a whole list on the far right hand side, underneath her blogroll. Enjoy!

Thanks PETA, now I just spit all over everything.

2010-07-22T06:33:00.000-07:00

All right, I swear to all the gods in the universe that if Sinéad O'Connor turns up wearing some fucking fur I'm going to lose all faith in humanity. Why, you ask? Certainly not because of anything Sinéad's done, first of all. I've mentioned my crazy love of her in the past, but before Sinéad, another female singer had my heart and changed my life with this insanely amazing album.

From the time I was nine years old, Janet Jackson was my idol. I dressed like her, I pissed off every last redneck in my small-town school by spouting the anti-racist mantras I learned from Rhythm Nation, and as an adult, I've cried myself to sleep many a time listening to her amazing song What About (be warned that the video, while powerful, could be triggering) and found healing in songs like Better Days and Enjoy. I still adore the hell out of Janet and credit her with shaping my political beliefs -- without her, it's safe to assume this blog wouldn't exist because I wouldn't care enough about racism, sexism and other -isms to see the error of PETA's approach. Hell, I probably wouldn't even be vegan at all. After all, I was 12 when I became a vegetarian, but I was nine when Rhythm Nation made me aware of the world around me. If you're not familiar with the album, at least watch the video for the title track. You won't regret it.

So imagine my dismay when I found out that Janet is posing for a line of ads for luxury fur company BlackGlama. It's especially shocking because she is (or was, I guess) supposedly vegan. Not to mention she's well known for being an animal lover, and her song God's Stepchild even mentions that as a child she often used her "four-legged friends" as a conduit for speaking to God. It doesn't make any sense on so many levels – it doesn't fit the type of style icon she is, it doesn't fit her image as an animal lover, and it doesn't match with her overall reputation for compassion that makes me and others love her so much. And it's pissed off a lot of people -- including PETA. Not surprisingly, PETA's statement is where I start spitting on things and forgetting my disappointment with Janet:

"It's amazing what celebrities will do when their careers are on a downslide, but we didn't think that Janet was this desperate. Surely, she knows enough about suffering and unjustified death to recognize that both occur in the production of a fur coat. We are asking her to think again and to donate these stolen skins to be used as bedding for animals orphaned by other human-caused disasters, such as loss of habitat," PETA spokeswoman Amanda Schinke said in a statement.

Okay, let's start small. That crack about Janet's career? First of all, where the hell are the careers of PETA's celebrity spokespeople? I haven't seen any of them starring in a blockbuster movie, or performing on the finale of American Idol, or headlining the Essence music festival. In fact, it seems to me that the last really big movie Alicia Silverstone starred in was 1999's Blast From the Past -- and I don't say that to insult Alicia; despite her PETA support, I really like her. Also, let's not forget that ageism, misogyny and racism are a big part of why Janet's music career has waned in the last several years -- I really hope I don't need to explain this, but in case you're confused, start by heading to your local beach and counting how many male titties you see casually and uncontroversially on display.

But what really gobsmacked me was the "unjustified death" comment, which caused me to scream the F word with so much enthusiasm that I accidentally launched a spit attack on my entire desk. Because, PETA, are you saying what I think you're saying? I...wow. How do you think Janet's gonna listen to you now, when you're bringing her DEAD BROTHER into this out of absolutely nowhere? (Either that or they're talking about slavery, which doesn't exactly improve the situation.) Did it ever occur to you that this is why nobody listens to you, why you're a water cooler punchline? Plus, given Janet's past commitment to compassionate causes, maybe you shouldn't have gone into this with the attitude that the only thing you have to gain is pissing her off. If PETA approached Janet respectfully, there's a good chance she'd listen, as she did when she stopped using a panther in her Rhythm Nation tour after animals rights groups protested.

And what the hell kind of bizarre-ass phrasing is "unjustified death," anyways? I mean, is that as opposed to justified death, like when somebody breaks into your home to kill you and you whack them in the head with a frying pan? How did we get from fur to killing home intruders anyhow? Now you've made everybody so confused that they forgot what the topic was. Good job, PETA.

It also occurred to me as I was agonizing over this that, wait a minute, what about Audrina Partridge, who was a PETA spokesperson before advertising for Carl's Jr? Do you think PETA slams her on their blog, or their favorite spokesobject, Pamela Anderson, who helped at the launch of a steakhouse/strip club in New York last year? Nope, because if you've done a photo shoot for PETA in the past, they'll never criticize you again, it seems. And let's not forget the time Olivia Munn showed up at a PETA event wearing leather boots and the PETA staffers actually defended her.

It also seems that they won't criticize you if you're a part of, shall we say, certain demographic groups. After all, aren't there tons of celebrities who wear leather that PETA isn't going after? WTF is up with that? Frankly, I'm so sick of the "fur is worse than leather" argument that claims it's worse to wear fur because leather is a byproduct of the cattle industry, and using the whole animal is apparently A-OK as long as it's a white dude doing it. Doesn't it make more sense to say that if we deal a blow to the leather industry, we also deal a blow to the cattle industry? You're taking out two targets at once if you actually try to take on the leather industry. Activist multitasking! (But given PETA's difficulty understanding the connectedness of human and animal struggles, I can't say I'm surprised that they don't get this connection, either.)

So, is PETA consistent on the no-animal-skins front? Puh-lease, you do remember who we're dealing with, right?

Behold, the dudes whom PETA apparently has no problem with: Vin Diesel wore a leather kilt while co-hosting MTV Europe Video Music Awards in 2003, and has often been photographed in leather, such as this photo where he's wearing leather pants and a leather jacket. And with how often Nathan Fillion wears leather jackets, you'd think they're his natural habitat -- just look him up on Google Images. Neither Diesel nor Fillion are mentioned anywhere on PETA's blog. 50 Cent loves his extravagant fur coats, but his only mention on PETA's blog is flattering. Adam Lambert wears so much leather so often I'm surprised the damn stuff isn't coming out of his pores, yet he's also AWOL on PETA's site.

But of course, when PETA chooses to excoriate a celebrity for wearing leather, it's a woman -- Jessica Simpson. They call women who wear fur "fur hags" but have no equivalent term for men who wear fur or leather. In fact, if you look on the right hand side of that link, you'll see that all the contestants for their 2010 Worst Dressed List are women. Now, they have called out Kanye for wearing fur, but don't think I haven't noticed that the only dude they've called out recently just so happens to be black. And, they made sure to call his girlfriend "sleazy" while they were at it, because a party wouldn't be a party at PETA HQ if nobody was being sexist and racist, amirite?

The bottom line is, PETA doesn't deal respectfully with the people they disagree with, and then they have the audacity to wonder why fur keeps coming back into style every few years. It's because people stopped wearing fur out of fear, not genuine moral conviction. PETA's like the Dutch kid with his finger in the dam, temporarily stopping the leak but doing nothing to help in the long term (and, quite possibly, HARMING in the long term). This whole debacle, particularly Janet's former veganism, also proves why you can't use celebrities as reason to go vegan, because if you're using someone else, particularly a famous person, as your moral compass, you'll never really commit yourself to a cause; for many, their commitment to a cause will forever be linked to the commitment of their idol, and that's never going to work in the long term.

I guess what I've really taken out of this is that I wish, more than ever, that we had an animal rights organization as prolific as PETA that could discuss these issues RESPECTFULLY and be taken seriously. I don't want someone I admire so much to roll her eyes and turn up her nose at PETA's statements, but given the heinousness of that statement, I can't say I'd blame Janet. I'm still hoping she'll come to her senses and stop this nonsense and donate Blackglama's money to a decent animal rights group (like one of the ones in my blogroll!) but I'm not going to hold my breath. I will, however hope that Janet remembers her words about critics who said Rhythm Nation didn't matter: "Even if only one person out of all those who listen to the album makes a change, that's an accomplishment." Because if even one person who sees this fur ad buys a fur coat, that's NOT an accomplishment. That's 240 more dead, tortured animals who absolutely did not deserve such a fate.

Note: Often I'm taken aback at the way in which animal rights activists interact with each other, both in person and online. I made the change requested by a commenter in a comment rejected for its holier-than-thou tone, but let's not be condescending about it, shall we? (See how patronizing and snooty that sounded, commenter?)

OMG, you guys, PETA is, like, TOTALLY feminist!

2010-05-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

I have proof. On their blog, they've written two articles that mention feminism! Never mind that one is a pitiful attempt to justify their bullshit treatment of women, ending with a call for opinions that won't be used if they're toooo critical of PETA. (Trust me, I know this from experience.) I guess I'd better close this blog now that we have the final proof that PETA are our Feminist Saviors.

This is what happens when you sell your soul

2010-04-27T17:12:00.000-07:00

Ah, PETA. You really don't care, do you?

Model/actress/G4 TV-host Olivia Munn, quite popular among gaming and sci-fi nerds (like myself), just did a campaign with PETA to combat circus cruelty and showed up to the PETA event wearing leather boots. A protestor asked, “Are those boots leather?” To which PETA staff retorted, “This isn’t a leather campaign.”

And in case you didn't click on the link, yes, Olivia Munn is naked in accordance with PETA's apparent mandate that all women in their ads must be naked and/or objectified in some way. Seriously, at this point it's like they're just phoning it in. I can hardly find anything in my inbox to get riled up about anymore because it is the same. damn. thing. over and over again. Titty this and titty that and titties titties titties everywhere! Although between this and the Crustastun fiasco, it does seem that PETA is making their true colors more and more obvious. Now I almost feel like it's unfair to welfare orgs to call PETA one -- my new theory is that PETA might just be a group of pathetic groupies who are trying to get the attention of celebrities in the hopes of being able to schmooze with the rich and famous. Which is, like, sooooo 2005.*

*I did a quick bit of research to make sure that 2005 was, indeed, the time when all those partying celebrities were in the news, and I discovered that Paris Hilton does not even come up on Google's Autocomplete anymore! Seriously, I thought maybe I was misspelling her name, or that I'd imagined her entire existence. I guess hope does spring eternal.

Prediction

2010-03-01T10:18:00.000-08:00

Today while reading the news about Obama's marginally high cholesterol , I looked into my crystal ball and came up with the following prediction:

PETA's going to come up with a really obnoxious PR release any second now. It'll tell Obama all about how going vegetarian will fix his cholesterol, pass health care, end the strife in Israel and Palestine, and cause him to fart rose-scented rainbows for the rest of his life.

Okay, so some of that is an exaggeration. But I'm betting my favorite pair of Vegetarian Shoes that they're gonna come up with something about this. And it's going to be annoying as shit.

PETA, please go fuck yourself

2010-02-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

Well. This is appalling. PETA is having losers vote on their website for their annual worst-dressed celebrity list (meaning: women and black men who wear fur; since leather is very commonly worn by straight white men, they don't typically include leather wearers in their list). Of course, the usual misogynist slurs toward women who wear fur are in full effect, but PETA decided to go the extra mile and also make light of domestic violence when including Rihanna in their poll:

You'd think that being a victim of violence would have opened Rihanna's heart to the suffering of others—like the animals who were beaten, drowned, and electrocuted for her fur coats. Girl, you've got beautiful eyes: Use them to see the pain and suffering your wardrobe causes.

Of course, I'm sure whatever ignorant intern wrote that is patting themselves on the back for the COMPASSION they showed in noting that Rihanna has beautiful eyes. (Because compliments on a woman's looks totally make it okay that her ex beat the shit out of her!) But ya know, when you drag somebody's traumatic past into the picture, that makes you a first-class insensitive asshole. If it weren't so awful, I'd be amused at the fact that domestic violence and women's rights activists have been trying to tell PETA all along that there's a link between exploiting people and exploiting animals, and that when you exploit people in the interests of animal rights you're actually strengthening the structures that also lead to animal abuse. But comments like these just show that the problem isn't that PETA doesn't get the interconnectedness of all forms of violence, as they're perfectly willing to make arguments like this. The problem is that PETA knows all violence is connected -- they just don't care about it if it happens to humans, which does absolutely nothing to help animals.

PETA, just another welfare org....

2009-11-24T06:20:00.000-08:00

So I thought this was some PR smear against PETA, until I found it at their own blog:

In a perfect world, lobsters and crabs would be able to do their deep sea thing without being preyed upon by humans hell-bent on turning sea life into seafood. Unfortunately, we live in a woefully imperfect world in which crustaceans are routinely boiled alive or cut open while they are still conscious. That's why we're hoping that the Crustastun will catch on.
A less cruel method of slaughter, the Crustastun uses a low-voltage current to instantly render crustaceans unconscious and to kill them within five to 10 seconds. I don't think that I need to tell you what a huge improvement this is over the three minutes of pure agony that lobsters suffer though when they are cooked alive!

....

Knowing that this method will spare our crustacean comrades untold agony, we recently reached out to Tucson's Child & Family Resources concerning its upcoming annual lobster dinner fundraiser. Last year, another organization reached out to the event's organizers and tried to get them to dump the lobsters from their menu. The organizers refused, but this year we convinced them to allow to us to provide them with a Crustastun to use. The inventors of the Crustastun will be on hand to train the staff in how to use the device, which is easy to operate and guarantees the lobster a quick and painless death. And while we don't condone this event and we hope that the organization's future fundraisers will not include harming animals, we're glad that we can at least help reduce the suffering of these lobsters.

Okay, this alone would be bad enough, but what actually happened at the event was that the CrustaStuns never arrived, and the lobsters were boiled alive anyhow.

Now, I'm sure we can go around and around with this all day long, but I think any animal rights activist who's ever argued with a meat-eater knows that it's a hell of a lot harder to convince the one who eats free range animals to give it up, because the free-ranger believes that treating animals badly is okay just as long as it's done in a hipster organicy kind of way rather than as badly as they imagine it's done by hicks in Hicksville. If we start letting welfarists rule the day, animals will never enjoy the freedom and dignity they deserve -- I mean, hell, would YOU want to be fenced in all your life, kept pregnant all your life and have your children snatched from you for slaughter, only to be slaughtered yourself in the end? Would all this magically become okay just because you occasionally get to see the sun? Yeah, didn't think so.

Another thing I found interesting though profoundly irritating is this idiotic blog in the Phoenix Times (really, do they hire their bloggers at Hank's Corner Pub and have them write before they get a chance to sober up?). The top photo is a play on PETA's brain-dead anti-woman campaigns, and it's pretty goddamn clear from the entry that A) The schnockered-off-his-ass author is familiar with PETA's titty campaigns and B) is very much against animal rights. Which leads us to the probability that C) TITTY ADS DON'T WORK! AT ALL!

I'm going to say it again: An organization that can't even be bothered to care about the most basic of human rights isn't going to truly give a shit about animals, either. Compassion is compassion, and you either have it or you don't. Clearly, PETA has none, for humans OR animals.

Hilarious update: I just received a funny comment from some dude whose undies are all in a knot over the fact that PETA didn't sponsor this event ($800 to the first person who finds where I DID say that!) and claims that, therefore, this article is untrue. So, just to make sure, I clicked over to PETA's original blog post, the one linked to at the beginning of this article, and it's GONE. Seriously. That's how badly PETA knows they fucked up, but rather than apologize, they're just going to act like it never happened. AND I never would have known about their little restructuring of history if this douche-balloon hadn't come around trying to act like King Shit of Know-it-All Mountain. Awesome.

Like you care, PETA

2009-10-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

So, PETA's started a new website that aims to convert Muslims to veganism and vegetarianism by condescendingly telling Muslims all about their own religion. Their reason for doing it now? An October 2009 Pew Forum study showing that nearly one in four people on the planet is Muslim. Not because, you know, they care about Muslims or respect their religion or think Muslim people are important on their own, regardless of how large a percentage of the population they are. And if PETA had been paying attention, they wouldn't need a Pew study to tell them that Muslims make up a large portion of the world.

I'm also wondering how long it will be before the Muslims they target start to notice that PETA's tactics are not exactly in line with Islamic values. I'm going to guess not long.

Care to elaborate, Daily Telegraph?

2009-10-07T19:40:00.000-07:00

I can't say I've ever read a less informative news story in my life. If anybody can tell me what's going on here, I owe you a Tofutti Cutie. All I can say right now is that this picture seriously freaks me out.

Jess Origliasso scarred after PETA campaign

Battle scars ... Jess Origliasso / Pic: Facebook Source: The Daily Telegraph

SHE wasn't doused with paint or sent a threatening letter, but Veronicas twin Jess Origliasso was not unscarred when she left a photoshoot with PETA this week.

The bleached star, who caught animal rights activists' attention by wearing a jacket saying "f . . . fur" earlier this year, was left with a cut above her eye after doing the hands-on campaign.
Jess and sister Lisa will head home in the coming weeks to start pre-production on their anticipated third album - three years after writing their last offering Hook Me Up.
"We're taking our time to experiment and push the assumption of what people think they know about The Veronicas," she said.

Uh oh, does PETA know about this?

2009-10-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

(Not a post about anything PETA has done lately, but something that reminded me of them...)

I have to say, I really love Google News' way of picking pictures to go with their front-page stories. Like the other day, when they had an article about Gordon Brown accompanied by a picture of Tony Blair. But today has to be my all-time favorite so far:

Wait, is that Ronald McDonald in the picture accompanying the Pakistani military story? Has he joined their military? Are conservatives across America going to join PETA in branding Ronald McDonald a terrorist? Or maybe he's just also concerned about the US aid bill, to which I say, it's about damn time Ronald McDonald started taking an interest in international affairs. Before this, nobody knew ANYTHING about the guy, save that he has really shitty taste in food. Perhaps this will help humanize him a bit more for his audience, although I am not entirely convinced that middle America will appreciate learning that Ronald is siding with the Half-Breed Muslin Terrorist Conspiracy From Hell. Reading through the story, it does not once mention McDonald's or anything remotely Ronald-related, which means that I can a) continue to indulge my imagination in RM's connection to the Pakistani military (is he trading French fries for nukes? Can we somehow blame the French for this?) or b) I can Google and get to the bottom of this very important development. In my ongoing quest to Know Everything, I chose "b."

Well, I am now officially deflated. It turns out that Ronald is not involved in any sort of international intrigue. He -- or rather, a statue of him -- was actually just getting cozy with two guys in Islamabad who have opinions on the US aid bill, as mentioned in a different story in a New York Times blog. One would assume, then, that Google News must have a bot that picks the pictures to go with their stories, and that their front page editors drink a lot of whiskey throughout the day. And here I was totally hoping to see PETA pick a fight with the Pakistani military. Damn you, reality (and Google)!

Today in passive aggressive backpedaling

2009-08-25T16:49:00.000-07:00

Well, at least I don't have to worry about having reason to close this blog any time soon. Remember PETA's atrocious ad shaming fat women for daring to exist outside of burlap sacks? Well, check out their latest bit of barfitude, put up in place of their prior fat-hating billboard. On its own, it's pretty standard PETA fat-hating fare, but check out this quote from one of PETA's typical hateful little bigots:

"Our goal is help overweight Jacksonville residents - the best way to do that is to go vegetarian. We're not trying to insult anyone," Ashley Byrne, a senior campaigner for PETA, told Huffington Post after the first billboard was put up. "Vegetarians look and feel better than meat eaters. This is a life-saving message."

Yeah, you little fucking spokestool, because I didn't get the message the first 2,403,211 times around that if you're ugly and vegetarian or vegan you're a big. fucking. failure, and the entire female population of the world, as well as many men, certainly don't hear often enough that the only thing that matters is how you look, not who you are or what you contribute to the world. You know what, Ashley? This thin yet ugly vegan is sick to fucking DEATH of your stupid little goddamn organization shaming me for not being the epitome of a HOT HOT HOT vegan. In fact, half of the reason why I absolutely refuse to do leafleting is because I know I'd make a bad example for veg*ans because of how I look, and if you've ever done animal rights activism you know that leafleting is one of the activities for which most AR groups desperately need volunteers.

And quite frankly, when I hear sentiments like this, I don't even feel like I'm doing a good thing by being vegan. In fact, I feel like by being ugly and vegan I'm doing more harm than good to the cause; I feel flat-out like a bad person, like a liability. And what about all those so-called hot non-vegetarians, and the other vegetarians and vegans who don't measure up? And what about the torture animals go through so we can live up to the beauty standards that Byrne and all of PETA promote? Are animals really better off in a world mindlessly and cruelly obsessed with looks and consumption, a world with a frankly carnivorous appetite that can only be satisfied through the most horrible forms of animal testing and torture? Are we really better off in a world that values looks over kindness, that offers us nothing in return for goodness and everything in return for beauty?

As we grow more obsessed with the shallow, harmful things of consumerism that PETA stands for, both animals and people suffer and die, and nobody seems to remember Paul Wellstone's simple yet truest truth: "We all do better when we all do better." A world full of people miserable because they don't "look" good will be cruel to animals, each other and the environment, will focus on buying and what they can do to reach that impossible zenith of beauty rather than working to change the world. Meanwhile, in a world where we're not distracted and driven to misery by the beauty industrial complex, where our actions and not our bodies or faces dictate how others view us, people will have incentive to be good and kind, and will have little to nothing to gain by exploiting animals, each other and the environment. That is the world I want to live in, not PETA's land of selfish Beautiful People.

PETA to world: Whales SUCK!!!11!!!!1!!!1! (And women still do, too...)

2009-08-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

I know I'm quite late on this and many others have already covered it, but I couldn't let it pass because it's one of PETA's more egregious stunts as of late. I shan't post a picture of PETA's latest piss-smelling billboard, but it's in Jacksonville, Florida and has an illustration of a fat-ish woman in a bikini. The emblazoned hate message on it is "Save the WHALES. Lose the blubber. Go vegetarian."

One woman in Jacksonville reported being so upset by it that she forwent a trip to the beach with her family -- and even though I'm vegan, and with street clothes on look reasonably thin, I can honestly say I'd probably do the same if I saw a billboard like that on my way to the beach. I simply do not look like a supermodel when I wear a bikini, and although I love swimming, I always feel horribly self-conscious in a swimsuit, such that things much smaller than this can tip my decision on whether to go to the beach. It's particularly shitty because I have a lot of upper body problems that could benefit from more swimming (ZOMG an unhealthy thin person!!! Call the Body Police!) but it is not often that I feel up to the emotionally grueling task of having my exposed body publicly judged while I'm just trying to enjoy myself. And quite frankly, the fact that PETA would probably claim the message isn't targeted at me doesn't make a whit of difference as to how hurt I feel when I see it; PETA's billboard is hurtful to ALL women and ALL fat people and ALL people who have eating disorders or body dysmorphic disorder, regardless of whether we're vegan, vegetarian or omnivorous.

Furthermore, what's with the fucking speciesism, PETA? How is trivializing the anti-whaling movement and appropriating it for your stupid everybody-hating billboard going to help any, you know, actual whales? The humorous context of "Save the Whales" on this billboard only serves to further the ridiculous, over-the-top way that environmentalists are portrayed and perceived in our culture. Also, as a commenter at Shakesville notes, "I really don't follow the logic of that billboard. How does losing weight 'save the whales' if by whales they mean fat people? Isn't their point that they'd be getting rid of fat people? Logically then this billboard should read 'Wipe Out The Whales'! But of course somebody might read that the wrong way and a cute animal (because they rarely care about any other kind) might get hurt. So instead they insult a significant portion of the population and look stupid."

Funnily enough, a few weeks ago a friend of mine sent along the following e-mail, and it seems appropriate to re-post it here. I don't know how true the story behind the French gym is, but what matters is the awesomeness of the words themselves:

Recently, in a large French city, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said:

"THIS SUMMER DO YOU WANT TO BE A MERMAID OR A WHALE?"

A middle-aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern:

Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans). They have an active sex life, they get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia and the coral reefs of Polynesia.

Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don't exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of psychoanalysts due to identity crisis.. Fish or human?

They don't have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them. Therefore they do not have kids either. Not to mention, who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store?

The choice is perfectly clear to me; I'd rather be a whale.

The orcas are watching you, PETA, and they do not approve.*

*(Yes, I know orcas are not technically whales, but sometimes an empress just wants to post orca pictures, ya know?)

Vegans against PETA badges!

2009-08-17T17:54:00.000-07:00

Ahoy, vegans! I crawl out from under my rock to bring you vegans against PETA badges that you can put on your website, use as avatars, etc. As I have approximately no artistic skills, you can bet your last falafel that I didn't make them. A lovely blog reader sent them to me. They come in all shapes so they should be appropriate for whatever occasion or space you have. Kind of like a black cocktail dress, only soooo much cooler! (No offense to black cocktail dresses, of course.)

Huh

2009-08-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the sparse posting lately, fellow PETA disparagers! Life has been crazy, and I am also in the midst of a fairly serious Personal Crisis and am attempting to Find Myself.

Wait! There I am! Under the desk, behind the dust bunnies and next to the ancient Egypt books!

Since I have been found for the moment, let's take a look at this interesting invitation for a debate between a philosophy professor and our BFF of ALL TIME, the one and only Ingrid Newkirk.

Some highlights:

While your followers who have managed to donate some 30 million dollars annually believe PETA's campaigns bring us one step closer to real justice for animals, there is still a significant percentage of animal advocates who disagree with this conclusion as well as PETA's tactics and fundamental philosophy.

Some PETA supporters have taken to avoiding any debate for the fear of what they call "infighting." Animal advocates are reluctant to give any energy into responding to disagreement in fear of disrupting the supposed unity of a movement for animals. However, I will remind you that debate and criticism is a lucrative means of exploring the truth. Debate is and has been a sound practice in academia and has been used effectively to learn more about a particular cause, theory, or discipline.

...

The purpose of this letter is to humbly request your participation in debating Gary L. Francione, Distinguished Professor of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law under my moderation. The invitation has already been accepted by Professor Francione, so the ball is now in your court.

While Francione recognizes the sincerity of your beliefs, the fundamental differences between yours and Francione's approach make for a disagreement of tremendous importance to how rights may be established for animals. Professor Francione's disagreements with PETA's approach and fundamental philosophy are evident in his Six Principles of the Animal Rights Position where he argues:

3. Just as we reject racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism, we reject speciesism. The species of a sentient being is no more reason to deny the protection of this basic right than race, sex, age, or sexual orientation is a reason to deny membership in the human moral community to other humans.

This appears to stand in disagreement that a campaign that is sexist in nature cannot be considered an animal rights campaign. Francione has also vocalized disagreement with PETA's campaign tactics in the form of billboards and public demonstrations.

Of course, because this is a debate about animal rights involving PETA, the comments degenerate fairly quickly into total weirdness, and I also have to voice my own personal distrust of the Examiner, whose contributors tend to fly fast and loose with facts. Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral also notes in comments that she once asked Gary Francione to debate her directly, and the debate never happened, so make of this what you will.

It's a shame they used the wrong picture of her, though. Clearly, this is the only picture of Ingrid Newkirk that truly does her justice, and it can only be found here at Vegans Against PETA:

Anyhow. Back to the dust bunnies now! If you need to find me, I will be chilling with my homegirl Hatshepsut. She was quite the gender outlaw, you know!

PETA, even stupider than we feared

2009-07-16T16:46:00.000-07:00

Some ass on PETA's lifestyle section is super-happy that the racist, misogynist, lying animal-haters at L'Oreal are trying to con vegans into giving them money. Namely, PETA minions are now lauding the monsters at L'Oreal for coming up with a gimmicky line of hair care products that they call "Ever Pure," which they advertise as vegan. Except, as the article notes, L'Oreal has never signed PETA's statement of assurance that they don't test on animals, and the company is widely known to test their ingredients on animals while trying to hype the fact that their finished products aren't tested on animals. Uh, what's the difference, fuckknots? Animals are still dying and being tortured for your products, regardless of what point in the process it's happening. As a UK group called Uncaged says, "Many companies can be deliberately misleading in their animal testing statements, cleverly wording customer letters in order to reassure a concerned public. Often they talk about the products when most of this type of animal testing is for chemical ingredients." They've also received a "worst" rating from Ethical Consumer for their animal testing policy and for their extremely environmentally unfriendly ingredients and practices. A discussion at this Australian message board gives more background info and links on the L'Oreal debacle.

Of course, a discussion on L'Oreal wouldn't be complete without a discussion of their absolutely miserable record as regards human beings. For starters, they refused to hire non-white women for a French campaign to promote their Garnier Fructis shampoos -- and became the first major French firm to be convicted of racist bias.

An earlier racist-misogynist excursion by L'Oreal saw them trying to force a female manager, Elysa Yanowitz, to fire a top-selling, dark-skinned female sales rep and hire a "hot" blonde. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that L'Oreal ass job Jack Wiswall told Yanowitz "that a dark- skinned salesclerk was 'not good-looking enough,' and directed her to fire the woman and 'get me somebody hot,'" and pointed out a blonde woman who apparently fit the bill. When Yanowitz, also highly rated in the company, refused to fire the dark-skinned woman, L'Oreal harassed her and generally made her life miserable until she quit.

And here comes the kicker. L'Oreal has a product called L'Oréal Kid's 2 in 1 Extra Gentle Shampoo that ranks as one of the most toxic shampoos on the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep database. Yup, children, whose brains are still developing, and whose parents will almost certainly believe they're protecting those particularly delicate brains by buying a shampoo labeled "extra gentle."

So, to break it down: L'Oreal hates women, people of color, animals and children. Is it any wonder that PETA's falling all over themselves to worship at their altar? It's almost like they were separated at birth!

Sexualisation for the Sake of it

2009-06-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

Aloha, anti-PETA expositors! This scorching summer day brings you a fabulous takedown of PETA's latest buffoonery, courtesy of Alderson Warm-Fork, author of Directionless Bones. It regards the ridiculous stunt described here, which sadly, is PETA's first campaign in South America. I mean, really, PETA? You couldn't start with an exposé of factory farms or otherwise describe where the meat on people's plates comes from? That says it all with regard to what PETA thinks of South Americans' values and intelligence, I think -- at least in the States and Europe they've done some actual uncovering of factory farm conditions.

Anyhow, without further ado, allow me to hand it over to Alderson:

A recurrent theme in animal-rights rhetoric is an attempt to connect with other
struggles against oppression, to present the abuse of animals as similar to the
abuse of different sorts of humans.

Now, for many people, the leftist revolutionaries of Latin America, from Fidel
Castro to Evo Morales to Salvador Allende, are a key example of that struggle
against oppression. So if you were an animal rights group and you found that the
granddaughter of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was a vegetarian and was willing to work
with you, it would seem that you have a campaign ready made.

You might, for example, have her in an outfit and posture that echoes famous
poses that Che Guevara often held. You could use a slogan like “Join the
vegetarian revolution”. It’s a brilliant plan. It’s got a striking image with a
lot of resonance, and it’s also got a point that can be backed up (the
connections between different forms of oppression, the need for revolutionary
change in human-animal relations, the willingness to endorse militant tactics,
etc.)

It’s controversial, sure – Guevara is a controversial figure, hated by some and
loved by others. But let’s suppose you have no problem taking controversial
stances. And perhaps your main plan is to run the campaign in Latin America,
where Guevara’s very popular.

But now, imagine that you’re also PETA. Now a problem emerges. There’s a woman
in your poster, but there’s nothing sexual about it. Nobody’s going to get a
boner out of simply seeing someone in an inspiring pose of resolute defiance.
What can you do?

I guess you’ll just have to make her semi-naked. Get her tits out, yeah? Cover
them with an ammo belt of carrots, sure, but make sure that she’s clearly in a
state of undress. After all, she’d rather go naked than wear fur, amiright?

Never mind that there’s absolutely no reason for a sexualised image in a poster
themed around Che Guevara and revolution. He is hardly famous for having posed
nude while storming Havana.

And never mind that it introduces a completely conflicting message that is
liable to undermine the actual point – that will encourage viewers to look and
think ‘I’d like to do her’ rather than ‘I’d like to aid her in doing something
revolutionary’.

Never mind that you’re sending the message that women must always be sexual,
even when the subject at issue – political relatives – has nothing to do with
sex at all. Never mind that you’re encouraging a culture where every bit of the
media features soft-core porn and women are pervasively judged in sexual terms.

That’s all beside the point. This campaign might get more attention now, and
that’s all that matters. Nice one PETA.

Non-violence, my ass

2009-06-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

PETA makes me realize that the English language simply does not have enough angry swear words, or enough non-degrading ways to express contempt. In their latest woman-hating stunt, PETA has "offered" to buy the clinic of slain abortion doctor George Tiller -- yes, in Wichita, the very same city where they were attempting to traumatize residents and capitalize on Tiller's murder by posting these billboards.

And what do they want to call it? "The Nonviolence for All Beings Center." Sometimes I wonder if PETA's PR people aren't plucked straight from the Onion's newsroom, except that the Onion's humor is intentional and sometimes actually has redeeming social value. PETA's humor, on the other hand, just serves to show how self-centered and hypocritical they are. Really, PETA endorsing non-violence for everybody? The people who show videos of a woman being stripped and beaten to death, who make the rampant murder of transgender people a joke, who dress up as the KKK, who stick women half-naked into cages, who steal from the Holocaust museum and show women as half-naked murdered meat on the street? Everything about PETA, from their actual campaigns to the number of dogs and cats they euthanize to their ways of interacting with oppressed people, is violent. I absolutely cannot believe that they would co-opt the work that non-violence activists have done and twist it for their own hateful, bigoted ends, ends which every day have less and less to do with helping animals and more and more to do with their own greed for attention and hatred for oppressed groups.

Animal rights and control of women's bodies

2009-06-12T21:01:00.000-07:00

I am so at the fucking end of my rope right now with the goddamn animal rights movement. No, I'm not going to go out and eat a goddamn steak or some immature, illogical shit like that, because it's not like cows ask some vegans to be obnoxious, vicious, triggering assholes. I would, however, like the animal rights movement to extend 1,209,348th of the respect to women's bodies, and all human bodies, that they extend to animals.

This is because I just went to a speech by a supposedly famous vegan who I'd never heard of before that literally has me wanting to hurt myself really badly. It's a good thing I'm a fucking hairy feminist or I'd know right where my razors are and I'd be up and running with them – of course PETA would disagree about hiding razors and be mortified that I'd rather be hairy and female than bleeding all over the carpet and sheets – but that's a story for another time.

Anyhow, in the aforementioned speech, a schmancy-ass vegan from New York obsessed over food and told us how going vegan made! her! skinny! Which is really funny, because it's made me gain 20 pounds in the last year since I started again. I've been struggling with my weight gain a lot, although I don't even weigh that much, and it's made my relationship with food really disordered and fucked up. The only time it's been this messed up was after I was raped and lost tons of weight, thus becoming a Model of Good Veganism. I haven't yet begun restricting my food intake as much as I did then because physically I feel better than I have for a long time, although this starts to recede every time I look in the mirror.

The thing is, for rape survivors, a HUUUUUGE part of recovery is becoming comfortable and non-hateful toward your body once again. When I was really little I hated how I looked because of Disney movies, yet although I never really came close to actually liking my body, I grew into an acceptance and natural flow with it. As long as I treated it well, it treated me well and that was all that really mattered.

But of course, rape changes that. The act itself, obviously, is the worst loss of control you can imagine. What happens after that, for many survivors, is an epically nightmarish continuation of that. Assholes who don't give a shit about ending rape fault you if you don't report it and criticize every aspect of your recovery, every shitnozzle in the world feels entitled to tell you how to get over it and when to get over it, you have vicious nightmares that you can't control, you have waking nightmares in the middle of the workday or when you're out with friends, you argue with longtime friends because they all think rape is hee-larious, your muscles start to tense up and even spasm because you're under so much stress all the time until your entire upper body is a fire pit of pain; basically nothing is under your control anymore, and you realize just how little ever was within your control.

Fast forward to years later, and suddenly you realize that one of the most important aspects of your life is being twisted by people who would like to control your body and actions in much the same way that the aftermath of rape did. I'm not talking about the (obvious) fact that vegans ask people not to eat animal products – indeed, consumption of animal products is simply asking people to not do something to other beings without their consent, so the control issues there really lie with omnivores.

However, the animal rights movement seems to increasingly be co-opted by people who equate thinness and obsessive exercise with moral goodness. This speaker harped on everybody in the audience about the importance of exercise, self-righteously telling us to go to the gym nearly every day (because hey, we all have the money for that, right?!?) and at one point she even said, “I don't care if you hate physical activity -- do it anyways!” And then she tried to go on about how oh, she hated gym in school too, but now she looooves exercise!

Well, I'm sorry Ms. Society, but you obviously didn't experience what some people did in gym. I'm not disparaging the importance of exercising, but just saying that to be that flippant about it is callous and extremely privileged. Why not say, “If you hate exercise, try to get therapy so you can perhaps work out your issues with it, or try out some types of activity you haven't tried before?” I mean, hell, girls get raped quite frequently by athletes in locker rooms after phy ed, and some kids have really, really serious issues that arise from how they were treated in gym. One of my first elementary school memories is of a group of boys surrounding a fat kid in gym, a kid who was one of the sweetest, most harmless people you could ever meet, dancing around him screaming “Horny Henriett-AH, Horny Henriett-AH!!!” while he cried and lashed out at them and the teachers did nothing. To this day I can still see the looks on most of their faces, including the boy who was their target, and it was horrifying. If it was that horrifying for me, I can only imagine what it was like for him – and from then on, all through elementary, middle and high school, he was a favorite target of bullies in gym class. One could hardly blame him, I think, if he hated exercise to this day and rarely engaged in it.

I was also a target, not to the same extent, but because of a minor eye disability I'm really shitty at sports and have had a hard time finding enjoyable ways to exercise, for both physical and emotional reasons. (For example, I don't have emotional issues with biking, because we never did it in gym, but my disability makes it difficult in certain situations.) And the thing is, sure, exercise is good for you, but why the fuck does it become a moral issue, particularly in the animal rights movement? Aren't we advocating for justice for animals, not the eradication of ZOMG FAT!!!!?!?!

Furthermore, is it only a moral choice if not exercising makes you fat? What about all the thin people who don't exercise – are they A-OK because they're not shaming the animal rights movement with their unsightly, un-patriarchy-approved fatness? After all, if it were really about health we should also be shaming people who smoke, or who work in dangerous environments, or people who don't get their houses tested for radon, which is the second leading cause of lung cancer. Given the environmental issues surrounding radon, one would think this would be something the animal rights movement would be hopping right on, since the environment affects animals too. And really, not getting your house tested for radon affects EVERYONE in your house, whereas not exercising affects only you – so why the obsession with exercise and thinness in animal rights? I mean, if you're going to encourage exercise so we can run away from angry security guards after an undercover filming of a factory farm, hey, that I could get behind – but until I plan to participate in something like that, you have NO FUCKING RIGHT to tell me what to do with my body. And really, we all know it's not so we can run away from security guards -- it's because some assholes think beautiful people will better attract followers to our cause than exposing abuse of animals in factory farms.

And so, they start telling us what we can and can't do as vegans, and telling irrelevant, alienating stories about their weight. Well, I am a woman. I am a rape survivor. I have had about all I can stand of people telling me what I can and can't do with my body, and if it doesn't benefit animals, it has no fucking place in the animal rights movement. Start your own goddamn exercise movement if you want, but leave me in peace and don't give me any more reasons to hate my body. I already have plenty. I came here to save animals, not shame myself, so move the fuck out of the way and let me do that. Because I sure as shit will not be a lot of help to the movement when I'm starving and sobbing in my bed, as I will be for many nights to come after this drivel.

Perhaps people will start seeing the light now...

2009-06-08T17:35:00.000-07:00

PETA's exploitation of Dr. George Tiller's murder has sparked a shitstorm the likes of which I haven't yet seen against them. I don't know why their other heinous stunts haven't caused quite this level of outrage (since those other stunts still, in many cases, exploit tragedies) but hey, at least more vegans and vegetarians are finally publicly giving them the ol' finger.

The latest awesome screed to pop into my inbox is from the North Star Writers Group:

I’ve been abstaining from meat-eating for a little over four years now, and I relate to PeTA’s goals and aims, but their execution is intentionally offensive and terribly miscalculated. I’ve never met a meat-eater who was talked into vegetarianism by a PeTA ad (granted, one of their underground slaughterhouse exposés solidified my vegetarianism, but the video showed raw facts as opposed to the inflated, controversial rhetoric of some of their recent campaigns). And yet I’ve heard plenty of people exclaim: “Just for that, PeTA, I’m going to go grill me a nice 24-ounce steak.”

Anti-PETA vegetarians and vegans, unite, and let us flock to Mercy for Animals, or Compassion Over Killing, or HSUS, or Farm Sanctuary, or, well, any AR group but PETA!

Stupid PETA news round-up

2009-06-06T20:26:00.000-07:00

Since I know we all just crave the feeling of moral and intellectual superiority that only learning about PETA can give us, here's a roundup of stupid PETA tricks that I just didn't have the stomach or time to write about.

At the always-fabulous Muslimah Media Watch, Krista has the breakdown of PETA's latest racist stunt -- they've claimed that beating women is part of local practice in the Middle East. (Funny, because beating women is part of local practice at PETA, too.) Glass houses, PETA shitheads, glass houses. Also note that PETA idiotface Dan Mathews is quoted often in this article; the guy's an ignorant, hateful nutcase and I'm gonna have an article on him soon. Oh, and PETA's official position is now that Canadians are "Neanderthals." Stay classy, PETA, and keep showing the people how much you respect them...

A college newspaper called the Advocate (not the same as the LGBT mag) has a great article called PETA: A lesson in staggering irrelevance.

Gay Wired reports (with a stupidly offensive headline) that PETA spokesobject Audrina Partridge is starring in an ad for burger joint Carl's Jr. She salivates at the burgers when she arrives on set and wears a skimpy gold bikini that would make the PETA idiots proud, if only she were doing it to prove that only vegans are sexy! In the woman-hating pissing match between PETA and the meat industry, I shall be cheering for casualties.

A friend sent along an article called The Problem with PETA. Here's an excerpt from the beginning:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was founded in 1980 and has since become the most recognizable animal protection group in the world. They deserve a lot of credit for almost single-handedly putting animal rights issues on the radar of the U.S. public. As concern for animals becomes more mainstream, however, much of PETA's public education work seems outdated and potentially even counterproductive. Has PETA outlived its usefulness and/or has its approach to generating media tarnished the image of its fellow animal advocates? Whatever the answer, it's a question worth asking.

Finally, it is a sad comment that PETA's celebrity craziness has me confused every time I see a headline on their thoughts on seal hunting. When I see such headlines, I keep wondering why anybody would hunt a talented British singer.

PETA wants to own your uterus

2009-06-03T20:28:00.001-07:00

Most people who read this blog have likely heard already, but PETA's now hoping to capitalize on the murder of Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. They want to get these billboards put up in Wichita, where Tiller practiced and where he was murdered. In addition to what I would hope are the obvious problems with such an idea, PETA seems to take the right-wing view that pro-choicers want to force women into getting abortions rather than that we want women to be able to CHOOSE whatever is right for them; we don't say, "Pro-choice? Choose abortion!" We say, "Pro-choice? Make an informed decision and do whatever is best for you." And that may be any number of things, from giving birth and raising a child to adoption to abortion. And I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say I'm guessing PETA's position isn't that people should choose to be meat-eaters, pescetarians or vegans and that all choices are equally valid. Under this approach, there really is no accurate way to draw a parallel between abortion and vegetarianism -- although I do find it interesting that after being so often compared to pro-life extremists, PETA now seems to be aligning themselves with that camp by cheapening and exploiting Tiller's murder and insinuating that pro-choicers are out to tell everyone what to do while using language that is eerily reminiscent of pro-lifers' "Choose Life" mantra.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised -- PETA has already tried to capitalize on murder and misogyny in the past by comparing the women murdered by pig farmer Robert Pickton to pigs. (To see the actual ad, go here.) Therefore, I shouldn't be at all surprised to see that PETA sees murder and brutal violence and assaults on women's freedom as a marketing opportunity, since they flat-out see women's bodies as nothing but marketing opportunities anyhow, but this is a new low even for PETA. It really, really furthers my theory that they're some kind of patsy for the meat industry. Nobody who wants to discourage animal cruelty (or be a decent fucking person) can honestly think this is a good idea, can they?

UPDATE: Two major billboard owners in Wichita, George Lay Signs and Clear Channel, have rejected PETA's ads, thankfully. Although PETA's still grandstanding as though they have other options, if Wichita is like most other American cities, Clear Channel likely owns the vast majority of billboard space. I really never thought I'd see the day when I'd agree with Clear Channel on anything, frankly.

And now they malign the Inuit people...

2009-05-27T15:20:00.000-07:00

This is an inukshuk

See that image above? Beautiful, isn't it? It's an inukshuk, a monument of unworked stones that Canada's Inuit people use for communication and survival in the harsh climate in which they live. The meaning of the inukshuit (the plural form of inukshuk) are "Someone was here" or "You are on the right path." If it puts you in mind of a human pointing the way, that's not just a coincidence -- "Inukshuk" in the Inuit language means "in the likeness of a human." Inukshuit are used, among other things, to point the way to channels where boats can navigate, to food sources, to shelters and campsites and as milestones.

Now, if you're at peace with this image, if you find it beautiful, important and meaningful, stop reading, at least for a while so this image has a chance to seep into your mind. You probably already know, but PETA's about to ruin it for you.

See, the Inukshuk was recently chosen as the symbol for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. PETA, being all disgruntled at Canada's annual seal hunt, has of course decided to use the occasion of the Olympics to make a statement about the hunt -- never mind that they've never slammed, say, the UK, China, Australia or other countries when they host the Olympics despite the fact that those countries all engage in just as much, if not more, animal cruelty as Canada.

Part of their campaign is that they've re-worked the Olympic logo with the rings to have blood dripping from one of the rings, which has caught the ire of the lawsuit-happy Olympics organizing committee. I could really give two craps about PETA's version of the Olympic rings. The only people it hurts are people who have plenty of money, anyhow. Of course, PETA didn't stop there. Why would they? So far they've only mildly hurt the feelings of some wildly privileged people. And we can't have that! For PETA wouldn't be PETA if they weren't working tirelessly to oppress the oppressed and portraying indigenous people as savages who beat on cute animals:

This is total disrespect for Inuit culture

Yes, they really went there. And they really don't give a crap and are spouting the pathetic-ass excuse that the Olympic committee has already cheapened the inukshuk by using it for the 2010 logo. This is despite the fact that when the inuksuk logo was unveiled as the Olympic symbol, Inuit Tapirit Kanatami president Mary Simon said it was great, so clearly the Olympics' use of the symbol does have the support of an important part of the Inuit community.

And anyhow, just because the Olympics committee decided to use the inukshuk doesn't mean PETA should (further?) cheapen it by making a logo that tries to get people to have a negative association with an important and little-known Inuit symbol. After all, will the average person looking at that think, "Oh, it's an animal rights argument AND an edgy commentary on the co-optation of an Inuit cultural symbol!" or are they going to think, "Hmmm, Inuit symbol doing something a lot of people find brutal, therefore Inuit people must do it themselves and are brutal?" If you know anything about the human mind and enduring historical attitudes toward indigenous people, and if you've actually looked at that damn PETA logo, people are going to go for interpretation number two first. Furthermore, PETA claims they're not against people like the Inuit who hunt for subsistence, but this type of stunt just guarantees that any criticism of seal hunting will be deflected from commercial seal hunters onto indigenous hunters.

I'm sure PETA thought of the negative ramifications of co-opting the inukshuk but simply didn't care. After all, when have they given a crap about the commodification of other cultures? Was it when they compared pictures of black men being hung in lynchings to slaughterhouses, or when they compared pictures of Jews in concentration camps to slaughterhouses by using pictures they essentially stole from the Holocaust museum? In the context of PETA's previous actions and their unwillingness to respect or form coalitions with human rights groups, this is nothing but racism and willful ignorance; PETA has no interest in learning about other issues or other cultures, and they certainly don't care about respecting oppressed people. After all, if they wanted to make a statement about seal hunting in connection with the Olympics, they could have had an image of the Canadian maple leaf dripping with blood, or they could have taken any number of other Canadian symbols that are NOT specifically connected to indigenous cultures and made a statement with those. Instead, they've done this, and since I hadn't yet seen the Olympic symbol and I've never seen an inukshuk before, PETA's "symbol" was the first glimpse I've had of any type of inukshuk, which makes me really, really sad.

THIS is an inukshuk

Way to fucking go, PETA

2009-05-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

A large majority of Americans -- and a significantly larger percentage than last year -- view wearing fur as morally acceptable, according to a recent Gallup poll. Now, we all know that every time somebody criticizes PETA's misogynist anti-fur campaigns, they scream, "But SEX SELLS!!!!" (Never mind that stripping and beating a woman to death isn't sexy...but I digress...) What I'd like to tell PETA is, well, knuckleheads, if sex sells, then every damn person in the West should be against wearing fur by now. After all, practically everyone has seen your dumbassed "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" ads, and many have seen your other crap like the mostly-naked Suicide Girls in the newer "Ink Not Mink" campaign.

But as I've said before, tits and ass will not convince people of a damned thing. In fact, given evidence that viewing women as sex objects makes men less likely to listen to women and even shuts down the part of their brain that experiences empathy, those ads are probably doing far less good than hearing it from a fully-clothed woman, and may even be doing harm to women and animals by shutting off people's empathy. It should also be noted that when you use a campaign that demeans and degrades one group and it fails, not only have you failed to help the group you aimed to help, you've also made things worse for whatever group you threw under the bus in your campaign. This is yet another reason why PETA-style campaigns are so ill-advised -- you can't be sure it will work, and if it doesn't you've simply unleashed more harm on the world; your impact isn't just zero, it's negative. You're gambling with people's lives and dignity.

Similarly, what PETA doesn't understand is that convincing people to change their lifestyle is a hell of a lot different than getting them to buy a particular brand of beer, and it requires far different tactics, tactics that actually make people think and that will stick with them, tactics that will appeal to their conscience and connectedness with others, not make them feel superior to anyone who's not a white cisgender man. See, the way we treat animals now is part of a hierarchical system that puts straight white cisgender able-bodied etc. men at the top. Meanwhile people not in that category are in the middle at various rungs of the ladder depending on how many privileged characteristics they have, children are next to the bottom, and animals are at the very bottom. Doing things that uphold this hierarchy, such as exploiting women and thereby upholding sexism, will not do a damned thing to liberate animals; it will only strengthen the hierarchy, and will increase people's estrangement from others. We will sink or swim together, and if we as animal rights advocates can't even respect our fellow human beings there is no way in hell we'll get anybody to respect animals.

It might sound wishy-washy, but it shouldn't: We are all connected, goddamnit. Until we understand and live by that, until we feel it with every breath of polluted air we take and with every brutal hate crime and every report of a young black man gunned down in an urban wasteland, we will all lose. It is only with compassion, love and respect that we will win anything, and I simply don't see that in any of PETA's campaigns. I see scorn, bigotry, adolescent snickering and a despicable sense of moral superiority. Given that, nobody should be surprised that Americans think it's okay to kill animals for fur; PETA has simply decided that human beings are not capable of empathy and will only respond to demeaning displays of dominance over oppressed groups. They should be ashamed of what they've done, and the rest of us should resist PETA's type of thinking at all costs. In the end, humans, animals and the earth will all be the better for it.

Dear PETA, nobody thinks you're funny except your mom. Love, Me

2009-05-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

Note: This post is more of a pet-peeves-about-PETA post than anything really horrible they've done. For once.

Ah, PETA. Right when I almost forget you exist, I open my email and lament to remember that you do, in fact, hog my air on a daily basis. (GET IT?!?! HOG?!?!? LOLOLOLOL....)

Now, if you think that joke was not funny, allow me to share an observation. PETA is also not funny. Well, unintentionally they are, but what I mean can be found in a recent entry from their blog:

Dear Furries, Please Don't Wear Real Fur. Love, PETA

Heads up, Pittsburgh: A menagerie of costumed wolves, rabbits, foxes, and other fake fauna are about to converge on your city.

And no, it has nothing to do with PETA.

Actually, it's all about Anthrocon—the world's largest "Furry" convention. OK, so if you don't know what a Furry is, I know you're dying to ask. In a nutshell, a Furry is a person who is totally into animal anthropomorphism (assigning animals human traits). I mean totally into it. We're talking loving fictional animal characters so much that they often wear mascot-like costumes of their fave animals (think Crayola-colored cheetahs in cargo pants).

Which is where PETA came into the picture. Don't get me wrong, we weren't trying to harsh their mellow. We just wanted to make sure that convention-going "Fursuiters"—as they like to be called—weren't parading around in the pelts of real animals. Here's the letter we sent to them:

(Scan of typical stupid PETA letter follows)

Now, I really love what happens next:

Their response?

Dear Shawna:
Real fur is frowned upon at all furry conventions, in the same sense that leaping in front of speeding locomotives is frowned upon at comic book conventions.
Yours truly,
Samuel Conway, Ph.D.
Chairman and CEO
Anthrocon, Inc.

Note that the funny part of this blog entry did not come from PETA. Now, some of you may not be familiar with PETA's dumbass blog in which dumbass PETA supporters write about dumbass things. You are lucky. More to the point, however, this writing style and this type of dumb, pointless stunt is pretty much the norm on the whole blog. And it makes me want to rip my toenails out and throw them at Ingrid Newkirk. On the same page as this waste-of-money Furries stunt we see a preview for an article called “Pamela Anderson Bowls Over an Austrian Official – Then Has a Ball,” and another article opens with this slammin', sassy line: “There was no love lost between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Detroit Red Wings as they battled on the ice last night in game three of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but there was love in the stands during halftime when Jason Levy asked his girlfriend, Nicole Hughes, to marry him.”

I mean, really, PETA, really? I KNOW some of y'all read my blog – it's called a tracker, you see – and I was thinking maybe you could take a cue from me, or better yet from Twisty Faster or Melissa McEwan and actually be funny. Because if I have to be annoyed with your crap on a daily basis I'd at least like to be amused, or feel that your donors are getting a little something for their money other than the upholding of racist capitalist patriarchy. But if the only way you can entertain people is by being so ridiculous that they just make fun of you, what's the point? (And if you don't know that all people do is make fun of you, you clearly do not get PETA news alerts sent to your inbox. Or hell, you don't even read your own press releases.)

Perhaps I should be careful of how I word this criticism. I wouldn't want to wake up and find out that PETA has extended an offer to me to contribute to their blog because they're so desperate. That is, unless it's okay that my first post will be titled “New blogger/rogue vegan declares PETA a tool of the meat industry.” But don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be trying to harsh PETA's mellow or anything.

Get your juvenile on....

2009-05-13T18:23:00.000-07:00

I love Republicans.

No, seriously! Have you heard that they're trying to re-name the Democratic party the Democrat Socialist Party? It delights me to learn that you can now re-name groups without their permission, so I, too, have taken this opportunity to join in the re-naming fun. Now, hold on to your faux fur hats, because this will be a highly intellectual exercise. And by intellectual, I mean you might get to use the word "poopy."

That's right, my revolutionary friends! We're going to re-name PETA! Please note that the suggestions below are ones that I've only come up with between now and getting home from work, so they are probably not as hilarious as they could be if I had a more democratic, er, Democrat Socialist attitude. But even an empress takes suggestions, so e-mail or leave your re-names below and I'll add them to the poll if they are pleasing to me and if I get a chance. Bribery will also help your cause. Of course, not having your entry there at the beginning means you'll start out behind, but if you are part of a privileged group you may consider it a free lesson in unpacking the invisible knapsack. See, sometimes you DO learn things here at Vegans Against PETA!

(Note: I've mostly stuck with keeping the acronym the same, because I figure name recognition is very important. Plus I don't want to invite uncomfortable comparisons to Prince. But other naming schemes are welcome if they're awesome enough.)

If you don't see a poll, make sure your NoScript or other script-blocking software is set to allow modpoll.com.

I'm still here!

2009-05-07T20:14:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone, I'm still here and haven't abandoned the blog! Life has just been hectic, plus nothing in my PETA Google alerts has caught my fancy.

I'm about to head off to bed, but I just had to share a thought: Has anyone ever noticed that the "e" in PETA's logo is the only letter that's not capitalized? I know, like it's surprising that "Ethical" would be the least important part of PETA's mission. Without it, they're just People for Tits and Ass. Yawn.

Cruelty is sexy

2009-04-22T19:04:00.000-07:00

If you ever take any advice from me, let it be this: Do not ever, under any circumstances, sign yourself up for a PETA Google news alert. Every day I must subject myself to an email full of their relentless stupidity, and every day I want to bang my head relentlessly against the wall upon reading it. In today's Stupid PETA Stunt, which contrary to PETA's "sex sells" mantra has received pretty much no media that I'm aware of, our darling idiots did the following (from a PETA press release):

Bowling Green, K.Y. -- Two PETA members in red bikinis will be crammed together in a tank of "bloody" water with the message "McDonald's Scalds Chicks to Death" outside McDonald's restaurant in Bowling Green on Wednesday to protest the abuse that chickens suffer in slaughterhouses that supply the fast-food chain. Other PETA members will hold signs reading, "McCruelty: i'm hatin' it."

When: Wednesday, April 22, 12 noon

Where: 1925 Russellville Rd., Bowling Green

Hey, everybody, what's sexier than scalding animals? Scalding half-naked women, er, I mean, scalding chicks, hell yeah! And obviously there aren't nearly enough images of sexualized violence against women around, so we need to make some more! Seriously, I wonder if the fuckbrains at PETA have taken a day of psychology in their lives. What's more likely to happen as a result of protests like this is that people will further associate violence against women with sexiness, and if they do happen to connect it to the issue of animal rights, they'll view violence against animals as sexy as well. See the boot study by Rachman and Hodgson in the 1960s, which showed that paired with sexual stimuli, researchers could create sexual response to a boot. A fucking boot, just because it was paired with pornographic images of women.

And as usual, PETA's attitude of "fuck everybody who's not a straight white cisgender man" is in full play here. Because despite the fact that viewing images of violence against women disempowers women and despite the fact that 1 in 7 people in Britain believe it's okay to hit a woman for wearing sexy clothing in public, clearly showing the link in people's minds between violence and women being sexy, and despite the fact that every day and everywhere we go we are barraged with images of sexy violence against women to the point where one in four women will be raped and most of us won't be believed because pretty much everyone thinks we asked for it, despite all these facts, PETA still thinks this shit is okay. Rather than having fully dressed people imitate chicks being scalded, or rather than having them wear a body suit of some sort, PETA has decided to once again portray violence against women as sexy. Never mind that the majority of vegetarians and vegans are women, and never mind that women are not viewed as being worth as much as men, which means that people don't care as much when they see us suffering or will even be turned on by it. Never mind the fact that they could have had men do this protest just as well. No, none of that matters, not a bit. What PETA wanted and doesn't seem to have gotten is headlines, headlines at the cost of the lives of the most ardent supporters of animal rights, headlines that very well may have linked murdering animals with sexiness in people's minds. Oh, and did I forget to mention this study, which shows that sexualized pictures of women make men view women as having as much agency as power tools and that included this interesting and disgusting tidbit?

Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other people's emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures.

The most important part to take away from this particular finding, of course, is the role that such pictures play in promoting rape by encouraging men to not listen to women's wishes. It also follows, then, that faced with some half-naked woman asking him to go vegetarian, a man is less likely to follow that woman's wishes. After all, if women only needed to get naked to convince people to see things our way, wouldn't female lawyers all present their arguments in bikinis? And hell, don't you think we'd have naked women taking to the streets to convince men to stop rape? Huh, yeah, I'm sure that would work really fucking well. Honestly, PETA, why don't you crawl back under the rock from whence you came and let the human race get on with the business of making things better on this planet? We won't miss you, I promise.

On a humorous note, as I was searching for PETA's press release, my browser became momentarily possessed and deleted part of my search term, resulting in a search for the term "Two PETinis will." I wonder what a petini is?

Vegan Verses

2009-04-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

The first full picture of Earth from space

Happy Earth Day, everyone! In honor of this magnificent day, it seems that everyone has given me a profusion of things to write about. Because I love all of you, I have decided to share some of them here.

First off is a video which is posted and discussed at Vegan.com. The video, as they write, "concerns a veggie activist who is encouraged to be as loud, strident, and judgmental as possible — in an ongoing effort to attract greater attention to vegetarianism and to keep more animals from harm. It becomes a vicious cycle, with him having to top himself each time. At the end of the video, he’s probably won a few new vegetarians, and he’s earned a few dollars. But it’s come at the price of antagonizing millions, and getting them to permanently regard vegetarians as dickheads." If nothing else, watch it because it's probably the only place on the Internet where you can hear the phrase "you're...the neo-Nazi cult leader anti-Christ PETA-loving superfreak."

After reading the comments at YouTube, I couldn't help but think that the same people who don't understand that this is satire are probably the same ones who watch misogynist videos and tell everyone to lighten up because "it's just a joke." Though given their obvious lack of a brain and understanding of what constitutes humor, maybe I could convince these dumb saps that it would be really funny to go around town spray-painting the words "Fuck your fascist beauty standards" on every misogynist ad they find. The humor, I would inform them, comes from the presence of the word "fuck."

Anyhow, I've lost my train of thought. (Fantasizing about revenge on misogynists does that to me.) The next awesome link I've received lately is from Adam at the blog H.E.A.L.T.H. It's a review of the insipidly stupid, misogynist, self-hating book Skinny Bitch, and he breaks that shit down, tying it into PETA's body hate tactics. The whole blog is really great, so look around it sometime if you get a chance.

Finally, here's a great article that asks for unity between animal rights activists and the No-Kill Movement. Nathan Winograd writes about how, after learning about PETA's insanely high euthanasia rates and having PETA try clumsily to defend themselves, AR-News removed PETA's posting privileges. I was very heartened to see this article, because it's only recently that I've learned about the tension between animal rights activists and no-kill advocates.

And that, folks, is your vegan roundup for this Earth Day! Don't thank me, just send chocolate.

It had to happen eventually....

2009-04-16T07:12:00.000-07:00

One might think that given my recent post on the Center for Consumer Freedom, it would be clear where I stand on stooges for the meat industry. Well, that fact has escaped the brilliant folks at PETA Watch Australia, who support animal slaughter and have seen fit to link to me, and whose readers probably don't know that one of the major sources at PETA Watch Australia, PETA Kills Animals, is opposed to cancer research because it's shown that red meat and smoking are bad for you. So, for these more intellectually challenged visitors, I would like to present some photography of what goes on in the slaughterhouses you so love (and I've seen much worse than this, but don't have time to hunt it down at the moment):

UPDATE: The turd faces have finally removed their link to me! Hurray! But not before a lot of them clicked over here to see animal torture pictures and read about the irreversibly corrupt, cancer-lovin' Center for Consumer Freedom. Because their link has been removed, I've put the pictures below the jump.

The take-home message: Meat industry patsies, please fuck off. This blog is not for you, and you are NOT welcome to appropriate my work to your abusive, ignorant, totally-in-denial ends. Nowhere on PETA Watch Australia do you make mention of human rights in any way, shape or form; your only reason for opposing PETA is because you get off on eating animals and can't stand the fact that not everyone does. Have fun killing animals, fuckheads. I hope you don't sit around shaking your heads and asking why the next time you hear about a mass murderer in the news.

Fucking fuckheads

2009-04-15T18:08:00.000-07:00

As I am currently in a monumentally foul mood, all I can say to PETA's latest fat-hating stunt is: Please fuck off. When you are done fucking off, head over to Kate Harding's blog for some intelligence. That is, if intelligence isn't one of the many things that's below you.

Following is the Press Release of Fuckedness that has made me want to rip my teeth out and throw them at my computer:

PETA Offers to Help Massachusetts Schools Crack Down on Childhood Obesity

For Immediate Release:
April 15, 2009

Contact:
Lindsay Rajt 757-622-7382

Springfield, Mass. - After learning that that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is reportedly planning to start sending "fat report cards" to students' parents, PETA has sent a letter to school district superintendent Dr. Alan Ingram offering to help students trim down by educating them about healthy and humane vegetarian diets.

PETA points out that meat-eaters are nine times more likely to be obese and suffer from the debilitating and life-threatening consequences of obesity than vegetarians are. Researchers have found that children as young as 3 can already begin to show signs of coronary heart disease (hardening of the arteries). A vegan diet has been shown to reverse the symptoms of heart disease.

"Kids' addiction to hot dogs and chicken nuggets may be making them fat and increasing their risk for deadly diseases," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "Teaching kids about the benefits of vegetarian foods like PB&J and orange juice is as important as teaching them their ABCs."

Oh yeah, and please note that Lindsay Rajt wants you to contact her at 757-622-7382. She should be glad I don't have an unlimited calling plan. That is, unless she likes to have people scream profanities at her.

The PETA pile-on

2009-04-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

Generally I try to cover things that are as new as possible on this blog, but since it's new I'm also playing catch-up. And one thing that I found from this October is an incredibly hate-filled page on PETA's Fur is Dead website:

Dressed to kill in gaudy furs and enough makeup to conceal their five o’clock shadows, our cross-dressing activists have been hitting the streets letting people know that fur is a drag. Looking more like lettuce ladies than broccoli boys, a group of gender-bending PETA drag queens even took home a third-place trophy in an April Fools Day costume parade.

Want to help educate people about the cruelty of the fur industry? Put on some pumps and show the world what a fashion faux pas fur really is! Whether you’ve got a flair for the flamboyant or you’re just an up-for-anything activist, staging a “Fur Is a Drag” protest is a terrific way to show people just how ridiculous fur really looks. You can enter a contingent of cross-dressers in a local parade or stage a drag of a demonstration outside a fur retailer. We have everything that you’ll need to make your event a raving success. You just need to supply a time, a location—and a few daring drag queens! And remember, a few hours in heels is nothing compared to what animals killed for fur go through, right, guys?

The Vegan Ideal breaks it down better than I can, but I thought I'd add to it a bit. First of all, as I've noted before, transgender people are 17 times more likely than cisgender people to be murdered, and are the most likely to be murdered of any minority group. Every year in November a day of remembrance is held throughout the United States where the names of all transgender murder victims from the past year are read, and candles are lit for them; oftentimes the programs for these events are out of date by the time the vigil happens because another murder has happened in the few days between printing and the Day of Remembrance. Furthermore, some studies have shown the unemployment rate of transgender people to be as high as 70 percent.

Yet somehow, it's still okay to call transfolk and drag queens "ridiculous" and foolish and to make fun of what are in PETA's eyes transwomen's pathetic attempts at "looking" like women. It's okay to reduce trans women, yet again, to their bodies and fashion choices, which are usually found wanting. They're flamboyant, they're hitting the streets and they're up for anything because get it? they're all prostitutes! And rather than bothering to educate themselves about where the term "drag" came from in this context, PETA uses it as an insult. The amount of hatred in this one short, completely stupid page is staggering; literally every sentence is offensive, transphobic and just plain ignorant. Not to mention the headline is just flat-out racist to boot. And of course it's misogynist, as transphobia usually is, because duh, everyone knows that anything feminine and even remotely resembling a dress is ridiculous and not to be taken seriously! It's completely revolting that PETA has taken one of the most completely vulnerable and reviled groups in our society and piled onto them like the cowards they are, leaving straight white men untouched and up on their thrones as usual. Somebody needs to tell Ingrid and Co. that minstrel shows weren't funny then, and they aren't funny now.

One might also think that given the recent anti-gay assault on Nathan Runkle, the openly gay founder and executive director of Mercy For Animals, PETA might stop to consider how much GLBT people have contributed to animal rights and the effect that their hate might have on people in their own community. But instead, they seem to assume that the only people worth having around are racists, homophobes, transphobes and misogynists. One has to wonder what the animal rights movement would be like for the rest of us if PETA got their wish and recruited all the world's bigots to their cause. I know that would be enough to make me run like hell from the cause I've supported since I was twelve.

Vegan teens: Cute, but not smart?

2009-04-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

Holy Isis, Sekhmet and Ra. PETA is totally targeting kids with their body-hatred tactics. But first, let me say that my friends and co-workers rule. They are always sending me great ideas for this blog, which prevents me from having to constantly wade through the dreck on PETA's websites. The times when I do have to be a big girl and look at their websites (which I will post about next) usually give me palpitations, so THANKS, y'all!

It is with this spirit of awesomeness that a friend alerted me to PETA's latest Hotness by Tofu contest. For the purposes of this blog, Hotness by Tofu will be PETA's tactic of banging people over the head with their opinion that veganism makes you HAWT!!!! And it is the only way you can get HAWT!!!! Today's totally transparent Hotness by Tofu tactic comes courtesy of PETA2, PETA's site targeted to high school and undergrad college students. (And if PETA reaching out to high schoolers doesn't scare you, then a career in running haunted houses is for you.)

Anyhow, here is the totally stupid bullshit that littered my friend's inbox earlier today:

Dear [Awesome Friend of the Empress Who Will Bring Us to Ruin]

I can hardly believe it, but it's time for our fourth annual Cutest Vegetarian Alive contest! We're on the lookout for the vegetarian guy and girl who get people's hearts racing — the two who use their cuteness to make the world a better place for animals. Does that sound like you? Well then, enter now!

Did you get that, y'all? "The two who use their cuteness to make the world a better place for animals." That's right folks, for us vegans, it's not about using your brain or your heart to make the world a better place! No sirree, it's all about how CUTE you are! And just think, while you're busy shopping for things to make yourself cute, how much you could be actually DOING for animals, or how much of that money could've gone to an animal rights group. Or wait, don't think about it. And never mind that you're probably not gonna win that contest if you have buck teeth, which can only be solved by certain animal-tested procedures. And never mind that if you're acne prone you're more likely to win if you've kicked that acne through use of animal-tested treatments, while that poor ethical sap who's suffering through it rather than line Galderma's pockets won't even make the first cut in this contest. Yes, folks, this is in fact what hypocrisy looks like. It is what hierarchical thinking looks like, it is what the cult of materialism and anti-environmentalism looks like, but it is definitely not what smart looks like. And vegans are smart. We've just got bad PR thanks to these clowns.

And honestly, what the fuck does "using your cuteness to make the world a better place for animals" even mean? You can't booby-flash the world into veganism, otherwise PETA totally would've accomplished that by now. And really, do teens even buy these stilted, overcompensating attempts at speaking their language or whatever? I mean, come on, at least say "I can't fucking believe it's the time of year for this goddamn contest again! Shit, where did the time go?" I would've loved that as a teen.

Speaking of vulgarity, next year me and my middle finger are totally entering the Sexiest Vegetarian Alive contest. With the words "FUCK" and "YOU" painted on my ta-tas.

All your band names are belong to PETA

2009-04-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

Oh God.

They might have gotten to Adam Ant (see the change from "Stand and Deliver" to "Save the Gorilla:), but they'll never get to the Pet Shop Boys.

Sounds like a joke, but it isn't-- representatives of PETA, with straight faces and everything, asked the long standing new wave band to change their name to Rescue Shelter Boys, after more than 20 years under their current moniker.

Well, at least it isn't vile like so many of their other publicity stunts, I'll give them that, and it could bring attention to the issue of puppy mills and the like. But really, PETA's been around since 1980. If they genuinely think this is such a great idea, maybe it would have been a better idea back in the Pet Shop Boys' heyday. Except oh wait, back in those days PETA was actually, you know, doing things to help animals rather than gazing at their collective navel.

Meet Your Meat

2009-04-08T19:20:00.000-07:00

The astute Vegans Against PETA reader is probably wondering by now whether I read any blogs other than Shakesville, as at least half the things I link to lead there. Today I read with disgust and interest this post at Shakesville about an ad for Burger King and another ad for milk. The Burger King ad is a rap to the tune of Sir-Mix-a-Lot's one and only hit "Baby Got Back," and is a rather clever ode to SpongeBob's square butt, accompanied by....women shaking their asses, with no SpongeBob ass in sight? And the icing on the shit cake is that "the Burger King" in this kid-targeted commercial is going around measuring the women's asses in the video. The milk ads, which are from Russia and haven't run (yet) feature women stylized to resemble cows, with milk standing in for semen, which is being shot into women's eyes like the money shot in porn, coming out of their mouths, and running down their bodies.

Of course, no industry has the lock on misogyny in advertising (though the beer industry comes damn close) but once you've read the Sexual Politics of Meat, it's hard not to notice the extent to which misogyny and hypermasculinity are used to advertise animal products. Of course, this makes sense since eating animals and degrading women are all part of a hierarchical system with straight white men at the top, and everyone else falling in line below. What's confounding is why PETA is always trying to out-misogyny the meat industry, as if the victor will be the one who can be the most misogynist and hypermasculine. Looking at commercials like this makes me worry about where PETA will go next, since they've now locked themselves into a game of misogynist oneupmanship with the meat industry. Are they gonna make their campaigns directed at children even less tasteful and incorporate games where some Vegan Overlord orders girls to weigh themselves every time they eat a vegan meal vs. a meat meal?

This is why you don't get into a dick-measuring contest with misogynists -- as the ever-escalating extremism of the porn industry has shown, you have to be willing to constantly up the ante if you want to use objectification to sell your product. One second you've got soft-focus pictures of smiling naked women that seem relatively harmless, but before you know it those women have toilet bowl seats around their necks or are being orally raped by the entire football team. PETA's argument is that they use sex because "nobody is listening," but if you want people to listen to sex in a world that's already sex-saturated, you have to make it more extreme and hardcore and offensive than anything else out there, otherwise it just gets lost among all the objectification that isn't going to extreme lengths by targeting children or splattering semen in women's eyes.

Finally, in case anyone wasn't aware, Burger King's veggie burgers are not vegan and haven't been for a long time. At the beginning they were (and I believe they were soy-free as well?) but they now have dairy, eggs and soy in them, thus rendering them inedible for vegans and a lot of other people. That's one king who won't be getting this Empress's business any time soon.

(Edited to add: Holy crap, I actually got through an entire post without using the f-word! **Cue applause and fanfare**)

PETA's pointless pussy/penis pushing

2009-04-08T17:09:00.000-07:00

PETA is trying to bore me to death.

No, really, they are! You see, as I'm sure everybody reading Vegans Against PETA has been waiting to hear, our hoseheaded friends at PETA have finished their Sexiest Vegetarian Next Door contest. And the winners are....a skinny blonde chick and a muscular black guy! Who would've guessed? It's almost like I never left my black intellectual studies class earlier this week, where we were talking about the idealization of white women, the more Aryan and skinny the better, and the hypersexualization of big buff black men. Really, PETA, could you be any more boring? Are you TRYING to make me fall asleep at my desk while visions of American history 101 dance through my head? Couldn't one of 'em at least have had a tattoo or body piercing or something? Or better yet, couldn't you just have saved me the trouble and not run this stupid contest at all?

You see, we all know by now that PETA is trying to get people to go vegan/vegetarian by convincing them that not eating animal products magically gives you Teh Hot. Better still, if you are a guy you will get your very own Pet Vegan Woman who is also very, very, very hot and likes to sit around in cages for your titillation. You will probably even get one of these women if you are gay, just so people don't start thinking that being vegan gives you Teh Gay.

However, in addition to objections I've previously raised about the Hotness-By-Tofu tactic, and the obvious objections that feminists have been raising for years about this sort of thing, PETA's tactic fails for another reason: There are plenty of hot meat-eaters out there, too. And there are plenty of vegans and vegetarians who don't measure up. I recently took one for the team (again) and looked up Maxim's most recent Hot 100, their list of the year's hottest women or whatever. Well, actually, I went to a blog that listed the top ones, as I couldn't stomach actually going to Maxim itself. This blog listed the top however many, and I double checked them against a list of famous vegetarians and vegans on Happy Cow. The verdict? One woman on the list is a vegetarian. (And to be honest, I don't even remember who the fuck it was. Sorry.) Here's the list of women who aren't vegan or vegetarian yet somehow manage to fit society's stupid standards for fuckability:

Lindsay Lohan, who PETA hates
Jessica Alba
Eva Longoria
Jessica Simpson
Christina Aguilera
Jennifer Garner
Scarlett Johansson
Ali Larter
Fergie
Sienna Miller
Angelina Jolie
Katherine Heigl
Sarah Silverman
Keira Knightley
Julia Roberts
Cameron Diaz
Shakira
Mandy Moore
Halle Barry
Penelope Cruz
Danica Patrick
Ciara

And yes, I double checked, and no, Angelina Jolie is not vegetarian or vegan, which surprised me. I then made my own very short list of other celebrities who are widely considered attractive and cross-checked it with the vegan and vegetarian celebrity list, and none of them came up as vegan. These are Selma Hayek, Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, Liv Tyler, Beyoncé, Viggo Mortenson and George Clooney. (And in case you noticed a pattern, yes, goddamn it, I watch too much Lord of the Rings. Interestingly enough, though, a lot of the rest of the cast is vegetarian or vegan.)

And then we get around to the fact that a lot of vegetarian and vegan celebrities don't fit the standard for super-mega-charged hotness. I mean, let's face it, people who are willing to buck off society's expectations of what they should eat are probably also more likely to be willing to buck off societal expectations for looks, and they may also be aware of the animal cruelty involved in most methods for achieving beauty. Of course determining beauty is subjective, and most of the people in the following list are celebrities who I consider far more talented, amazing and beautiful than any of the people on the "hot" lists. In fact, my favorite singer is on this list. But I know that society doesn't see things as I do, so I've picked celebrities with society's fucked up standards in mind:

Meatloaf (Hey! I didn't say I liked ALL the people on this list, K?)
kd lang
Sinéad O'Connor, also known as the MOST FUCKING AWESOMELY AMAZING SINGER IN THE UNIVERSE OMG!!!!!!!!
Moby
Boy George
Seal
Chelsea Clinton
"Weird Al" Yankovich
Yoko Ono
Michael Jackson
Prince
Tracy Chapman

I hope you can all tell who my favorite singer is on that list. But anyhow, what are we to do about this? Should we tell less attractive people to eat meat so they don't embarrass us and so we can make an example of them? And, what about all the vegetarians and vegans who have done amazing things for the world? Think Corretta Scott King, Rosa Parks and Gandhi, to name a few. Long after Pamela Anderson is dead and forgotten, these three will still be in the history books. As my co-worker said today of PETA's Hotness-By-Tofu tactic, "it's baseless and it's stupid." It tells us nothing about the real reasons to go vegan or vegetarian, it devalues people's real contributions to the world, it's completely and totally refutable by the mere existence of meat eaters who are "hot," and worse yet, it says to those of us who don't measure up: This is not your movement. We don't want you, you make us look bad. Go somewhere else, anywhere but here.

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend

2009-04-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Normally you'd think I would be thrilled to be getting tons of mail about PETA getting bad press. Well, usually I am happy when somebody in the media takes them down a peg or ten, but this week the bad press has not been the type any ethical, honest person would like to see.

You see, for some absolutely harebrained reason, PETA's (admittedly too high) euthanasia statistics are back in the news. Mainly it's been blogs, but one of my Google news alerts showed that the Telegraph of the United Kingdom has gotten in on the action as well. The driving source behind these articles has been one Center for Consumer Freedom, a front group for the meat, tobacco, junk food and alcohol industry. One of my friends who's heavily involved in animal rights pointed out to me that it might be a good idea to let the world know up front that these haters are not welcome to appropriate or twist my work to their ends. I'm guessing this wee blog isn't even on their radar yet, but should that ever happen, here is the official Vegans Against PETA statement on the Center for Consumer Freedom and the many other industry front groups they run:

The Center for Consumer Freedom is made up entirely of money-hungry, lying, manipulative, selfish, life-hating, fear-mongering fuckdongs who have absolutely no good purpose in the world. They and their affiliates will never be used as a source on this blog, and discussion of their possible merits will not be tolerated since none exist.

There, CCF shills. Is that clear enough for you? Now run along and go smother infants or whatever it is you sick lot do with your spare time.

With that out of the way, let's do a brief rundown of what CCF is all about before my lunch break ends:

They regularly attack the National Cancer Institute for publishing studies showing that, for instance, red meat and smoking are bad for your health. Their most recent press release against the NCI was just a week ago. (Link is to the cache so as not to send them traffic.)
They have spread lies about the Humane Society of the United States, claiming in front of Congress that HSUS is in league with the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation front. Read HSUS's response here. (And I'm sorry, anybody who honestly thinks HSUS is in league with terrorist groups is a dingaling of the highest order.)
They've had domain names taken away for posing as a consumer group and trying to purchase domains similar to those of groups they oppose in hopes of tricking people into going to their sites.
Finally, one of the many front websites CCF runs is PETAKillsAnimals.com. (The link is to Source Watch's article on PETA Kills Animals, not the website itself.) They note that CCF's major funders are groups that PETA has targeted in their campaigns, hence it is clear that CCF's opposition to PETA has nothing to do with concern for animals or anybody else, but rather their own financial interests. After all, if CCF gave one sixteenth of a shit about animals, why would they be receiving money from the meat industry and why would they attack cancer researchers who question the value of meat eating?

As my friend wrote to me, "They say that consumers should have freedom...But shouldn't consumers have the freedom to know if their foods have GMO's in them? Or if they are produced by egregious animal abuse?" Which is a pretty good summary of their dishonesty. Like Concerned Women for America, their name is a misnomer. CWA isn't concerned about women but rather upholding patriarchy. CCF isn't concerned about consumer freedom but rather about protecting the worst forms of corporate exploitation and dishonesty.

It's pretty clear that CCF has been fighting a losing battle these days, as states increasingly ban smoking in restaurants, lower DUI limits, restrict the availability of junk food and implement protections for farmed animals. As more changes like these happen, we can expect to see the so-called Center for Consumer Freedom and other similar interest groups go more and more over the edge as things get more and more desperate for them and the economy starts to take a toll on their profits as well. (We can see a similar phenomenon right now among extreme gun advocates and racists with the election of Barack Obama.) When people are desperate and losing, they resort to lies, scare tactics, hatred and flat-out stupidity, which is about the only thing CCF and their associates have going for them. People of principle and honesty are best off steering clear of this self-interest group.

Read it and puke

2009-03-29T14:41:00.000-07:00

Into my inbox this morning has dribbled a vile little bit of word vomit, courtesy of PETA's aforementioned Holocaust on Your Plate campaign. It's from PETA's blog, and apparently even though they apologized for the ad in 2005, they're not sorry for it anymore and are willing to spend tons of donor money to appeal a ruling banning the campaign in Germany:

Back in 2004, PETA launched our Holocaust on Your Plate (HOYP) traveling display, which juxtaposes images of animals in slaughterhouses and factory farms with images of humans in Nazi concentration camps. The display was inspired by a passage from Nobel-prize–winning Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer's book, The Letter Writer: "In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka." This struck a chord with one of our Jewish staffers, who proposed the idea of creating a display that he hoped would encourage people to consider that the same mindset that allows the routine and systematic murder of animals also allows the routine and systematic murder of human beings.

The HOYP display—which was also funded by a Jewish PETA member—traveled all over the U.S., where it sparked a tremendous amount of debate and discussion about both animal rights and human rights issues. Then across the pond, PETA Germany took the idea and ran with it. And that's where the trouble began. Yesterday, Germany's high court banned PETA Germany’s Holocaust display, stating that it would have made "the fate of the victims of the Holocaust appear banal and trivial."

This ruling left the staffers of our German affiliate scratching their heads, because the display only renders the humans' suffering "banal and trivial" if the animals' suffering is considered banal and trivial. Which is the whole point of the display …

Anyway, PETA Germany is, of course, appealing the ruling, and it is confident that free speech will win out in the end.

So what do you think, PETA Files readers? Did the campaign go too far? Was the German high court justified in banning it—or should free speech have reigned supreme?

Hey, I think we've almost got racist bingo!

Anyhow, it's pretty goddamn sick that PETA uses the old canard of "a person of this group said it, so we as a non-Jewish American-based organization with no understanding of Jewish or German culture are perfectly justified in using this group's misery to our own bullying ends!" Second, I don't really give a shit that the staffer who liked this stupid idea was Jewish, and neither do most people in the Jewish community. He is one person who likes this fucked idea compared with millions of Jews who are outraged and hurt by it. Also, as my Ingrid Newkirk post discusses and the anti-racist bingo card mentions, plenty of people are completely willing to sell out their oppressed group for temporary power from the dominant group. After all, would any sane person ever go to Clarence Thomas or Michael Steele for enlightened commentary on racial issues? (And one has to wonder what PETA means by "Jewish" with regards to their staffer. Do they mean a practicing Jew, or somebody who's like one-sixteenth Jewish and only goes to temple once in a while as a way of "connecting" with their Jewish heritage?) And why does PETA go on about how Matt Prescott, the self-hating Jewish guy who ran this campaign, had relatives who died in the Holocaust? I mean, so do a lot of Jewish people, and Anti-Defamation League National director Abraham H. Foxman is a Holocaust survivor and has roundly denounced PETA's display. And Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who was shown without his permission in one of the pictures, also denounced PETA's campaign (emphasis is mine, and the article is from Google's cache as it doesn't show up on the paper's main site anymore):

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was unaware until a visit to California this week that his photograph was being used in an animal-rights campaign that compares livestock awaiting slaughter to victims of Nazi concentration camps in World War II.

During an interview before a speech this week, the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner was asked by a reporter to review a portion of the campaign, which has been labeled "The Holocaust on Your Plate."

In the advertisement, which Wiesel hadn't seen before, he recognized himself.

"They even have my picture here," Wiesel said as he looked at the ad. "They shouldn't do that."

The photo was of emaciated Jewish men on bunks in the Nazi death camp Buchenwald, where Wiesel and his father were taken and where Wiesel's father died before the camp was liberated in 1945 by allied troops. Wiesel, now 74, pointed to the upper right corner of the photo, to the recognizable dark eyebrows, to confirm it was him.

That image is juxtaposed against a picture of chickens in cages in the national campaign launched last week by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA.

...

Wiesel said that the PETA campaign exemplifies perhaps his greatest disappointment in life.

"I am not afraid of forgetfulness," he said. "I am afraid of banalization, of trivialization and this is part of it."

You know PETA has stooped low when they are perhaps the greatest disappointment in a Holocaust survivor's life.

Similarly, just because Jewish scholar Isaac Bashevis Singer once compared meat-eating to Nazism does not mean that he would have wanted his words used in this way coupled with such images and used by a non-Jewish group that doesn't give two craps about Jews or the Holocaust. Conveniently, Singer died in 1991, before PETA ever started the Holocaust on Your Plate campaign, so he's not around to say whether he would have wanted his work co-opted like this. Interesting that PETA didn't find the work of a living Jewish author to use in their campaign, even though Judaism has a relatively strong tradition of vegetarianism -- one can only presume that they knew it would have been extremely unlikely they would have found a Jewish scholar willing to go along with such an idea. In fact, PETA even used deceit and lies to get the photos of Holocaust victims because they knew the Holocaust Museum wouldn't release the pictures if they knew what they were for:

PETA had purchased the photo rights from the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, which issued a cease and desist order against the organization last year, saying in a letter to PETA that its "exploitation of these materials [is] a gross perversion of our mission," and noting that the photo rights were "obtained deceitfully from the museum."

Wow, PETA. Way to show respect for the Jewish community there. Readers may also have noticed in the article about Matt Prescott that PETA promoted the same Holocaust-and-animals comparison at the beginning of the Palestinian intifada in Israel in 2000. So, all I can say to PETA and their hideous, triggering, beyond insensitive antics is "lech lehizdayen!" And if you don't know what that means without a dictionary, PETA staffers, then you don't know enough about Jewish culture to be running ads that co-opt the most traumatic chapter in Jewish history.

Who runs a Holocaust ad in Germany, anyhow?

2009-03-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

All right, I'm not sure why this is happening now, but Germany's highest constitutional court has just ruled that PETA's 2003 Holocaust on Your Plate campaign is offensive and has banned it (although I don't know if it's running anymore, or if this case was the initial reason why the campaign stopped):

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- Germany’s highest constitutional court ruled that an animal-rights campaign comparing the slaughter of animals for consumption with the murder of Jews by the Nazis is forbidden by law because it offends Holocaust survivors.

The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe today upheld a lower-court ruling that sidelined the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals campaign, entitled “The Holocaust on your plate.” PETA in March 2004 had presented a picture of animals being prepared for slaughter next to victims of a Nazi-era concentration camp.

The animal-rights campaign represents “a minimization and banalization of the plight of Holocaust survivors,” the court said in a statement. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany.

Damn right. What I'm still not sure of is how the hell PETA ever thought this campaign would be acceptable anywhere, let alone in Germany. They did end up apologizing for the ad campaign, which makes you wonder why they haven't apologized for their lynching campaigns or the commercial with the woman being beaten to death for wearing fur -- maybe because they've never faced a real threat of legal action from those, I would guess. To be honest, I didn't even realize they were running the Holocaust campaign in Germany, though I'm not surprised they did. This is, as one of my favorite ecofeminists Pattrice Jones has noted, trying to win an argument by brute force. You don't care what the effects are on your audience; you just want to bully them into doing what you want. You want to scare them, you don't want to engage in respectful dialogue, you assume your audience is too stupid to be swayed by any other method. The end justifies the means, no matter how horrible the means and no matter how many people are hurt along the way.

Anyhow, Germany, although your legal system clearly needs to speed the hell up, you rock!

Vegans Against PETA: First unintentional bid for world domination a success!

2009-03-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

Holy crap! Vegans Against PETA made its first international debut yesterday, courtesy of my FAVO(U)RITE NEWSPAPER OF ALL TIME, The Guardian:

I have to admit, I have no idea where the Guardian found this blog, or for that matter how they ever noticed my description in the upper right hand corner, as Blogger continues to mock my best-laid schemes to change it to a readable color. What I do know is that I also got a fat promotion at work last week, so I reckon this is the universe's way of rewarding me for standing up for my fellow humans and animals by revealing the evils of PETA. You, too, can be a beneficiary of the universe's goodwill if only you click on this blog every day, link to it and tell all your friends and local news outlets about it! Why, just look at PETA basher lagusta -- the universe has blessed her with awesome shoes and tons of chocolate! And sparklyfanta has stopped procrastinating, and has been bestowed with impeccable taste by the universe as evidenced by her love of super-rad show Firefly! What's not to love?

In other fantastic news about this blog, one of my friends today informed me that she actually had PETA in her will, but after reading this blog they are OUT of it. Holy crap again! Maybe I need to add a subtitle to my blog title: "Vegans Against PETA: World Domination Express." Except, of course, I am against systems of hierarchy and domination, so said subtitle will happen when somebody starts giving a shit about animals because they saw some airbrushed supermodel in a bikini. In other words, never.

I learn about Ingrid Newkirk so you don't have to

2009-03-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

I have an obsession that's been festering since Sarah Palin's run for vice president. It has recently been inflamed by two wackaloon women journalists who have worked themselves up into a frenzy over Obama announcing the creation of a Council on Women and Girls, because that's apparently sexist and degrading to men or some shit.

Basically, I am obsessed with women who revel in their own oppression. I am obsessed with women who actively seek to oppress other women. Call them collaborators, self-haters, female Uncle Toms, they're all the same at heart. Whether it's Camille Paglia or Phyllis Schlafly, they all seem to have this belief, like collaborators in wars, that pleasing and appeasing their oppressors will somehow gain them a measure of privilege, that they will somehow become not-woman, that their oppressors (in this case men) will give them a piece of the pie and they will transcend gender. Of course, as far as I can tell it hasn't worked for a single woman, but that doesn't stop these appeasers from trying. In the animal rights movement, of course, that person is PETA president Ingrid Newkirk, who when confronted with the misogyny of PETA pulls out all the pathetic stops in defending it. Aside from the fact that objectifying women is, as I've written here, only going to result in more animals being tortured for beauty, how the hell does a woman get her head so far up her ass that she can't even see what she's doing to her own sisters? Is she crazy?

Well, maybe. One blogger surmises that Newkirk has Münchausen By Proxy Syndrome (I've linked the cache both because that blog takes forever to load otherwise and I'm not sure whether they deserve much traffic). I have my own reasons for not thinking that's the case, including how gendered that diagnosis is. I also have my reasons for feeling kind of bad discussing this, because it's not as if women aren't already labeled crazy for the slightest thing. But because this blog is about PETA, and because the damage Ingrid Newkirk is doing both to animal rights and women's rights is incalculable, I've decided a little introduction to her is necessary.

Right. So, one of the most searched things about Newkirk is her will. Because it's batshit fuckin' nutzoid. A few, er, tidbits include:

a. That the “meat” of my body, or a portion thereof, be used for a human barbecue, to remind the world that the meat of a corpse is all flesh, regardless of whether it comes from a human being or another animal, and that flesh foods are not needed.

d. That one of my eyes be removed, mounted, and delivered to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a reminder that PETA will continue to be watching the agency until it stops poisoning and torturing animals.

e. That my pointing finger be delivered to Kenneth Feld, owner of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, or to a circus museum to stand as the “Greatest Accusation on Earth” on behalf of the countless elephants, lions, tigers, bears, and other animals who have been kidnapped from their families and removed from their homelands

Of course, there's no mention of the poor sap who's gonna have to execute this will. My guess is they won't find any takers, unless they find some Jeffrey Dahmer type who'd take joy in it rather than learning any valuable lesson about animal rights.

OK. On to her Wikipedia article!

The first thing you'll note is mention of her crazy-ass will, though there's no real discussion of anything in it, which is sad because it prevents the masses from learning about the Real Ingrid.

Another irking thing is her constant invoking of the term "press sluts." Somebody needs to tell this woman that derogatory slurs that denigrate an entire group of people are so not cool. Next thing you know she'll be calling meat-eaters "dietary n***ers." And nobody will be surprised when she does.

Onward. Sister likes Formula One racing? Wow, so much for the fucking environment. And, it's like SEX! Grody. I'll take my vagina without gasoline in it, thanks.

We also see her get all self-righteous and indignant about the woman at the shelter who euthanized her neighbor's unwanted kittens, but as this blog and her Wikipedia article show, Newkirk is now a full-fledged Kitty Killer herself. In fact, she is no longer simply the one who carries out those killings, but the one who orders them. She is the grim reaper of all creatures sweet and fluffy.

When she talks about becoming vegetarian, we get a glimpse into why, perhaps, she sympathizes almost exclusively with men and we see just how childish her understanding of gender is when she talks about how she loved meat and "would eat roadkill if [she] could":

"I'd eat burgers, steak, anything. I love car racing and meat. I am a boy at heart, I am my father's son."

Yup. Gender essentialism is part of what makes you stupid, Ingrid. Just a tiny part, because there are so many things that make you stupid, but it takes many drops of water to make a flood, right? For the sake of brevity I won't get into why gendering every little last goddamn thing in the world is beyond ridiculous, but perhaps that can be another post for another time. (And you'd think maybe after being told several million times to read "The Sexual Politics of Meat," girl might give it a thought. But that would require challenging her assumptions, which we all know Ingrid Newkirk does. not. do.)

This little part, which gives some background on the history of the animal rights movement, also made me snicker, in a sad way:

The concept of animal rights was at that time almost unheard of in the United States. The modern animal rights movement had started in England eight years earlier, in 1972, when a group of Oxford University scholars, particularly philosophers, had formed the "Oxford group" to promote the idea that discrimination against individuals on the basis of their species is as irrational as discrimination on the basis of race or sex.

But apparently in today's Brave Newkirk World, racism and sexism are perfectly rational, while animal abuse somehow isn't. Good one, Ingrid!

And speaking of, now we get to the racism! You knew there would be racism, right? This is PETA's president we're talking about, after all. Newkirk told Michael Specter of the New Yorker that "she has had to stop vacationing in tropical or poor countries like Mexico, because she spends the entire time rescuing animals from what she calls their 'horrid owners.'"

Holy fucking hell, right? Is Ingie Poo saying that it's worse for animals to be abused by brown people? Because that's sure as fuck what it sounds like. You'd think she'd know from her activism in the United States that we have 1,930,208,488 ways to abuse and treat animals brutally and are no better than anybody else in this regard. But no, she can't even go to fucking Mexico because she might see the same thing she could see here, except it's infinitely more traumatic because brown people are doing it. Hey, I've got an idea, Ingrid -- since there's so much animal abuse here on Earth and you've made clear that you can't stand to be around it, how about you go live on Mars? It's even the Dudely Planet, which would be right up your alley since you're so above all things female.

Well, that's about all I got for the Wikipedia article, since I can't stand to parse it for a second longer.

One final thing needs saying, however. You may have noticed that as you type in Firefox's Google toolbar, it makes suggestions for what you might be looking for based on commonly searched words and phrases. Well, if you type "Ingrid Newkirk" into the Google toolbar of Firefox, it doesn't suggest "animal rights" or "veganism" to go with it. It suggests "will," "quotes," "insulin," "diabetes," etc. (For the record, Mary Beth Sweetland, a PETA VP, has diabetes, not Newkirk.) If you type the letter "a" after Newkirk's name, the only suggestion is AIDS, due to the fact that she once said PETA would be against a cure for AIDS if it was brought about through animal testing. Now, if you type in "MLK," many of the suggestions include civil rights. If you type in Malcolm X, Black Power is heavily associated with his name. If you type in Gandhi, non violence is a suggestion, all of which makes perfect sense. But how pathetic are you, and how much of a failure is your activism, if people don't even associate you with your cause? In fact, the majority of the most common searches on her name suggest that people are just looking to point and laugh at her (which will happen no matter what type of a search you do on her).

God, reading all this crap about Newkirk has been one of the most obnoxious experiences of my life. In summary, I've figured out a little bit about her allegiance to patriarchy, but in the end, this is all I've got:

Famous dude gets fat sucked out for PETA

2009-03-16T10:20:00.001-07:00

In this post, I wrote about how PETA encourages people to have cosmetic procedures that are tested on animals and how their tactics only encourage the continued exploitation of animals for beauty. Well, I never quite expected that anybody would directly attribute their cosmetic surgery to PETA, but it looks like former child star Corey Feldman got liposuction last year after seeing a PETA poster of himself in which he apparently felt his stomach looked fat and disgusting (it didn't, though of course Susie Feldman looks like a total helpless object in a way that Yoko Ono never did in the bed-in photos.)

It will probably shock exactly no one who read my Blasphemy post to learn that liposuction is tested on animals:

In the animal studies, it appears that tumescent liposuction combined with microwave power between 30–40 W yields less blood in the suctioned fat while improving the ease of passing the cannula.

If you don't have access to the link, don't worry -- all you need to know is in the part I quoted. (That is, unless you want to see the really nasty fat pictures that went with it.) If you want to find out more about how you can look PETA-fabulous with the help of this animal-tested, PETA-approved procedure, Google's got the goods.

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: PETA's beauty standards are not compatible with animal rights or respect for the environment. They never have been, and they never will be.

Edited to add: Shit, I just reread this post and wanted to clarify that by "nasty fat pictures" I mean actual pictures of fat that's been sucked out of people and, I don't know, microwaved or whatever it is that gets done to sucked-out fat in this study. It's nasty because it's something best left inside one's body and not microwaved, kind of like a heart, pictures of which also gross me out.

PETA and Objectification

2009-03-14T14:14:00.000-07:00

Greetings, readers! The following post comes to us from Alderson Warm-Fork of Directionless Bones, who will also be blogging here on occasion. Someday I will figure out how to create different users for this account so my introduction won't be necessary, but I must also someday figure out how to get a decent tax return, make my own jewelry and engage in urban foraging without poisoning myself. Thus, I hope no one is holding their breath when I say I will "someday" do something.

PETA and Objectification

One of the main claims urged against PETA is that their numerous sexual images of women constitute ‘objectification’, which is bad. In this post I want to explain this idea as clearly as possible.

‘Object’ has a lot of meanings – vernacular, grammatical, philosophical. In broad terms it can be used relatively as ‘the object of my attention’, ‘the object of my desire’, etc. to mean that thing which a certain action is targeted towards. It can correspondingly be used absolutely, as ‘an object’ full stop, to mean the sort of thing which in general has things done to it, rather than doing things.

‘Objectification’ then means a pattern of words or images of whatever that emphasises and prioritises the things that are done to something over the things that it does. This has an important relationship with two other ideas: personhood and hate speech.

Personhood is related because although clearly persons are objects, in that they can be seen, felt, thought of, and acted upon, what is distinctive about persons is a certain sort of activity. Perceiving, thinking, reasoning, understanding, deciding, desiring, aiming, etc. are the distinctive activities of persons, and it is these activities, not any perceptible difference, that identifies persons (persons don’t, for example, feel different to the touch from non-persons).

So one consequence of objectification is that what is objectified is de-personalised; its personhood is devalued relative to what persons can do to it.

Hate speech is another phrase with often unclear meanings, but I present it in a certain sense – as speech which legitimises violence, which presents a class of beings as by nature fit targets for violence. This is clearly a species of objectification – indeed all objectification will have a certain tinge of ‘hate speech’ because to be acted on, to be used like an object, is typically a violent experience.

So how does this relate to animals? Food animals are supremely objectified. The single most accurate way to sum up the way they are treated is – they are treated as objects. They are resources, property, things. Even animals which are spoken about hatefully as, for example, ‘beasts’, as dangerous and threatening and hence deserving extermination, are presented as having more agency and activity than the broiler chicken, which is in a sense merely a KFC bargain bucket on legs.

And the ‘hate speech’ component of objectification comes through here very clearly. Nobody literally ‘hates’ broiler chickens – nobody thinks ‘yeah, those fucking chickens are going to get it now!’. But the objectification, the seeing them simply as resources for human use, justifies and legitimates the single most extensive and large-scale systematic act of violence on earth – the killing of billions of chickens every year. Objectification legitimises violence.

How does this relate to PETA adverts showing nude or effectively-nude women? This trend, this societal obsession with the naked female form, fits the definition of objectification because it “emphasises and prioritises” the things that can be done to that form – things ranging from ‘desiring’, ‘fantasising about’, to ‘touching’ and ‘having sex with’. Even the action of ‘seeing’ is emphasised – the whole point is not just what this woman looks like but that she is showing herself. No individual image need carry such an emphasis – the pattern of endless repetition clearly does so.

And as with animals, objectification is linked with violence. If the principal feature of women is their suitability to be acted upon, to be seen and desired and touched and had sex with, then their other traits (such as the ability to choose, to make rational decisions) are obscured, and actions, such as rape or harassment, which conform to that ‘essential nature’ (sexual object) while conflicting with the secondary trait (rational chooser) make a lot more sense. Indeed, if a woman’s essence is to be desired, then any action which displays desire, from wolf-whistling to badgering her into unwanted sex, can be seen as a ‘compliment’, a benevolent act.

Female humans are not killed on the same scale as chickens. But the fact that so many of them experience sexual violence, the fact that historically most sex has been non-consensual (since marriage was seen as making consent irrelevant), the ratio of women killed by men who claim to love them compared to men killed by women, constitute a no less serious crisis.

Empirical arguments about causal links need not be central: if we can recognise objectification of chickens as a component of the complex of ideas which support ongoing violence against them, then we should recognise that same taint in objectification of women. Organisations which try to oppose one system should not do so by participating in the other.

Cross-posted at Directionless Bones

Blasphemy, beauty and animal rights

2009-03-12T18:35:00.000-07:00

I am a traitor to the animal rights cause, I admit it. Last week I was at the doctor to have my ears flushed out, and decided while I was at it that I am sick and goddamn tired of my face being constantly covered in pimples when I'm in my late twenties. So, I asked my doctor what could be done, hoping to be put on some type of low dose birth control. But due to the side effects of birth control and my history of reacting severely to oral medications, she put me on two topical bacteria-killing gels. Now, I try to avoid conventional Western medications at all cost, but I am really at the end of my rope with this acne business. So without a second thought I marched myself down to the pharmacy, had my prescriptions filled and started using them. Three days later I was already like a new woman. Only my forehead has persisted in looking like it belongs to a fourteen-year-old, and I haven't even had much drying. There's only one problem, which I thought of a few days later.

Both these products, being prescription-only, are tested on animals.

There, I've said it. And don't worry, I've berated myself enough for it so you won't have to. But you know, there's a good reason why I was desperate enough to get medication for something that is abso-fucking-lutely not a threat to my immediate physical health. Because, even though my brother has pretty much the same type and severity of acne as I do, I get constantly reproached and ridiculed for it, far more than he ever has. I've also heard men in the animal rights movement say that such-and-such a woman isn't a good representative of veganism or vegetarianism because she's fat, or has acne, or is ugly in some other way.

The problem is, so much of the animal rights movement, thanks mostly to PETA, has built itself around the idea that vegans, particularly vegan women, are hot (or, as I and my favorite bloggers like to say, "hawt"). They try to convince people that being vegan will automatically make you hot if you're a woman, and if you're a dude you'll suddenly have all these hot women flocking to you. Never mind that PETA and other animal rights groups have amassed enough videos of genuine animal torture in slaughterhouses to cover a large town, and never mind that people who go veg for moral reasons, such as myself, are probably a hell of a lot more likely to stick with it. I first went vegetarian when I was 12, never having heard any of this hooey about sex-ay vegetarians. I mean, how many human rights movements have told people things like, "Supporting South African liberation will make you sexy!" or "Going on freedom rides to Mississippi will give you giant tits and clear skin!" No, hell no. And you know why? They didn't have to. They built a case that was strong enough for people to give a shit, and they didn't actively alienate members of their cause.

Now, if you're a whiny little PETA sycophant, you're probably all, "but but but that's DIFFERENT! What you eat CAN affect how you look!" Well, sure, if you starve yourself you might start to look really, well, starved, and if you don't get enough, say, vitamin C, you'll probably get scurvy, which has physical manifestations as do other deficiencies. But unless you're really, really deficient in certain vitamins, what you eat is not going to have a whole hell of a lot of bearing on how you look aside from the fact that you won't have those physical deficiency manifestations that I talked about. Now, for SOME people certain foods may cause acne or what have you, but when you get down to it, genetics are really the determining factor. After all, what else would explain why both my parents had acne, despite having reasonably different diets during adolescence, and why my brother and I, despite having totally opposite diets, have pretty much identical acne? And what does this emphasis on looks mean for us vegans who don't measure up, for vegans who are fat or have acne or, like me, have thin hair (and yes, I've also had people suggest I have thin hair because of some dietary deficiency)?

What does it mean for us? It means we're a failure. Yes, you read that right, and no, I'm not exaggerating. Because I don't believe in giving assholes traffic, I'm not going to post a link to this asshat who calls himself a doctor, but let's just see one outcome of the Vegan Obsession With Hawtness:

Fat vegans, however, have failed one important animal: themselves. Furthermore, their audiences of meat-eaters and animal-abusers may be so distracted by their appearance that they cannot hear the vital issues of animal rights and the environment; resulting in an unacknowledged setback for a fat vegan’s hard work for change.

Yup, that's right, fatties! You are singlehandedly bringing down the movement! God, what were you thinking by going vegan, anyways? You wanna make the rest of us look like fools? Why don't you just take your fat self to a corner and not talk to us, as we are obviously far too good for you simply by having been born with higher metabolisms. (Since a discussion of why food is really not all that linked to weight, and why fatness is not in fact unhealthy is beyond the scope of this post, I shall direct any doubters to this brilliant post at one of my favorite blogs.)

Oh yeah, and even if food were linked to fatness, wouldn't fat vegans actually be doing more than the rest of us to help keep great vegan restaurants and co-ops in business? How much sense does it make to have a movement whose success is based largely on convincing businesses to offer a certain kind of food, yet in order to be worthy of that movement we have to starve ourselves?

So now we have a fat vegan who's been told she's an embarrassment to the movement and a failure. But no matter how little she eats, she's never going to be as thin as PETA says women should be. Hell, most thin women aren't as thin as PETA says women should be. What's a girl to do?

Enter ephedrine, a well-known weight loss drug. But does it work? And what are the side effects? Well, let's see. Here it is! A study showing that ephedrine increases ventricular arrhythmias in conscious dogs after myocardial infarction.

But wait, dogs? Conscious dogs? We're talking a vegan here!

But if she doesn't get thin, she's a failure and doesn't deserve to represent us. Just like I'm a failure if I don't get clear skin and represent properly, regardless of what it's doing to my body or animals.

Yet if PETA ever wanted to berate me for my use of acne medications, they don't have a leg to stand on. Because Pamela Anderson, their favorite spokesobject, has implants. Actually, she's gotten them twice. She had them once, removed them, and later changed her mind and had larger ones put in. What do we know about breast implants? Here's a smattering from Google:

Prior to approving the Trilucent breast implants, researchers conducted animal studies; injecting the filler material into rabbits with no toxic or allergic reaction.

And this:

The animal studies do not, however, establish the connection with certainty, particularly since they were designed to intentionally stimulate an antibody response by mixing a known antigen with the silicone.

Here's my personal favorite:

Wistar rats underwent submammary implantation with either smooth or textured silicone gel implants and were administrated 200 mg/kg of PFD daily. The control group received saline. The animals were killed at 8 weeks. The capsular tissue of both implants was removed for histologic and molecular analyses.

Aren't we all better people now that we know what it took for PETA's darling to get breast implants?

Hey, speaking of PETA's spokesobjects, have you ever noticed how young they all are, or at least how young they look? Not a line on any of their faces, bless their hearts! Could it be the result of creams or a great skin care routine? Not bloody likely. If you want great results for young, wrinkle-free skin, you gotta go with Botox. But if you've been in animal rights circles for a while, you probably know all about the creepy, barbaric experiments that have gone into getting Botox ready for human trials -- tests that have to be re-done before shipping each batch of Botox because the stuff is so dangerous.

From the Humane Society of the United States:

Imagine that you are one of the animals unfortunate enough to be used in assessing the potency of new batches of Botox® Cosmetic. A popular anti-wrinkle treatment, Botox Cosmetic's active ingredient—Botulinum toxin—is one of the most poisonous of known substances.

First, the toxic substance or the full product is injected into your stomach. Then, as it courses through your bloodstream, the toxin causes nausea and then brings on a wave of muscle paralysis that spreads throughout your body. Finally, over the course of the three-to-four day test, you suffocate to death.
Welcome to the ugly world of testing the most common cosmetic procedure in the United States—testing that uses a method known as "LD₅₀" which leaves at least 50% of its animal subjects—mice—dead. A recent development in HSUS's campaign to end Botox testing on animals has the potential to change the look of that world, and to help protect mice from this gruesome death. (HSUS website) There are also YouTube videos.

I've looked for updates on this, and it doesn't look like Allergan has budged -- and given FDA regulations, it's questionable whether they actually could. I don't say that to apologize for what they do, because it's reprehensible, but I point it out to highlight the fact that when we as a society have such absurd expectations of women's beauty that medical procedures are the only way to measure up, it's necessary to point out that those medical interventions cannot, by law, happen without animal testing first. (See number three.) They can't even get to tests on humans without animal tests, let alone get to final FDA approval.

And this isn't all. Tooth whiteners, contact lenses (ever seen a PETA model with glasses?) most of the more affordable cosmetics, all test on animals. Sure, you can buy cosmetics that aren't tested on animals, but they usually cost more, and consider that in the UK, where it's illegal to test cosmetics on animals, at least one company was found to still be testing on animals. Mind you, this is in a country where there are actual legal consequences for testing on animals, not the United States where your only punishment is ZOMG THE WRATH OF PETA. (Okay, and the wrath of the rest of us vegans.) I also simply love the fact that PETA's "Fur trim is unattractive ad," which mocks women who don't meticulously shave their pubes, was put out around the same time PETA was in a huge fight with Gillette over their animal testing policies. Got hypocrisy, PETA?

Now, I know another argument would be that the FDA shouldn't require animal testing and we should have alternatives. Obviously that's true, but we don't have alternatives right now so until we do, women can't live up to PETA's standards without engaging in some form of animal abuse. (And I would argue that even then, they shouldn't have to.) Furthermore, contrary to the views of many, though not all, animal rights environmentalist folks, entirely plant-based makeup and other beauty enhancements are simply never going to have the effectiveness of chemicals and invasive procedures. Many of my comrades are very defensive about this, seeing it as a claim that plants and other natural remedies are a failure. But I'm an environmentalist too, and rather than seeing it as a failure of plants, we should see it as a failure of impossible beauty standards. Because if plants are such an utter failure at making women look a certain way, that simply means that it's not natural to expect women to look the way we're expected to. This defensiveness about plants as great beauty aids does none of us any good, especially when there are so many genuinely great, effective things about plants that we could be focusing on.

The take-home message? The cult of beauty is simply not compatible with animal rights or environmentalism. If you, as an animal rights organization, are intentionally and knowingly furthering fascist beauty standards through your use of ads, you are doing worse than nothing for animal rights. You are encouraging people to engage in practices that require the torture of animals. You are encouraging women to spend money on animal torture. You are encouraging mindless consumerism and destruction of the planet through unnecessary packaging and toxins that we wash off our faces or excrete into sewer systems. You are encouraging your own models to use animal torture to enhance the so-called beauty that you demand of them. You are encouraging women to hate themselves. You are alienating vegans who don't fit your fascist beauty standards and who have no interest in engaging in animal torture to achieve your standards. In short, you have lost. the. plot.

Blog theme: A boring, non-PETA-related post

2009-03-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

Just in case anybody's wondering (or even reading, LOL!) the green rainbow theme I have up right now isn't permanent. I really like it, aside from the fact that the title is separated from the text by that cute picture, but I don't think it really captures the atmosphere of this blog. If anybody can point me to any resources, I'd be eternally grateful. I feel like I've been all over the Internet looking for a good theme, but nothing has really struck me yet. To make things still more difficult, art and design are totally not my thing, otherwise I'd just make one myself. Bah humbug.

UPDATE: Okay, I got rid of the bears-and-rainbows banner, but now I have to figure out how to change my blog description to a readable color rather than the grey that Blogger thinks it should be. Unfortunately, this is proving almost as difficult as convincing PETA that the KKK isn't funny.

Now what?

2009-03-03T18:45:00.000-08:00

Well, damn. I did not expect to be starting a blog today, but lately I've been consumed with thoughts of how much I hate PETA, and since "Vegans Against PETA" is one of the most-searched terms on Google, I decided I'd better start this blog before the hate group that is PETA tries to make one of their interns register it or something.

Anyhow, why do I hate PETA, especially given the fact that I myself am vegan? Well, I really hope you're not too attached to PETA, because I really don't have anything nice to say about them. In fact, I'll probably call you names and make you cry if you try to defend them, so maybe you should just head over to www.iamamisogynistwankstain.com instead of wasting your time here.*

But for those of you who are genuinely curious as to why I and many many other vegans hate PETA, or if you're feeling masochistic and just want a recap, here's just the briefest list before I retire to my richly canopied brocade and damask bed (I am an empress, you know):

PETA hates women. A whole lot. Okay, that's not entirely true. They really like dead and/or abused women. It could be their new motto! "The only good woman is a sexy dead one." Hey, dead women don't eat meat, right, PETA?

Although PETA is perfectly willing to exploit women's bodies to get attention, they also think we should be ashamed of our natural bodies. Funny that.

PETA hates transpeople. When viewing this ad, please keep in mind that transfolk are 17 times more likely than cisgender people to be murdered, and are the most likely to be murdered of any minority group. Every year in November a day of remembrance is held throughout the United States where the names of all transgender murder victims from the past year are read, and candles are lit for them; oftentimes the programs for these events are out of date by the time the vigil happens because another murder has happened in the few days between printing and the Day of Remembrance. Given these facts, the blood on the transwoman in this ad cannot be construed as anything other than a mockery of the rampant murder of transgender people.

PETA hates black people.

PETA hates Jewish people.

PETA thinks lesbian relationships are a big ole' fucking joke and that lesbians should only exist for the pleasure of straight men. (In one of the videos of this bile -- I don't know if it's in this one, I'm not watching it again -- one of the women in the video giggles at the end, "But we're straight!")

PETA comes into towns where other animal rights groups have done hard work to make changes, then takes the credit for those changes. In some cases they prevent those changes from happening at all. (Although other posters at this forum discuss it, I'm thinking especially of Mary's post at June 19, 2005, 10:22 am.)

PETA has their very own craptastic "rescue" program, in which 97 percent of animals they take in wind up being euthanized. By contrast, humane societies in Virginia (PETA's home state) typically euthanize 35 percent of the animals they take in. Read this if you want to learn a little more about how sick they are on this front.

For all their hoopla about the evils of fur, they're not nearly as militant about leather. Oh sure, they have their totally objectified leather police (not linking) and have a few leather campaigns, but I have yet to see them douse a member of a biker gang with flour for wearing fur. (And how cool does Samantha Ronson sound in this article, seriously? PETA could take some tips from her on Being a Responsible and Rational Adult.) I'm thinking this isn't so much an oversight as yet another manifestation of PETA's rampant misogyny, because as the saying goes, "People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs."

They use pit bulls to get donations and sympathy, yet support totally exterminating the entire breed -- supposedly because they're too likely to be abused. I wonder if they think women should be exterminated, too? Except oh wait, then they'd have a lot fewer people to exploit in their ads....

Anyhow, that brocade and damask bed. It's calling me now. I leave you with a poem that, according to legend, was created by some brilliant minds at Vegan Freak. At some point in the future I shall pontificate upon the rules and philosophy of this blog and how to ensure that it doesn't have the unintended effect of giving PETA free publicity and furthering the hate they spew. But for now:

Hush lil' baby don't say a word
Ingrid Newkirk is a big ole turd.
And if she cooks you food to eat.
It will be stuffed with "happy meat."

*Ha ha, that site doesn't really exist, you dumbshit PETA interns!

“You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.”
--Harriet Woods.