| Friday, March 20, 2009 |
| I learn about Ingrid Newkirk so you don't have to |
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 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:
 Labels: animal rights, biography, collaborators, crazies, fauxgressives, feminism, Ingrid Newkirk, misogyny, pseudofeminism, racism, self-hatred
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posted by The Venerable Vegan Empress @ 9:16 AM   |
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| Saturday, March 14, 2009 |
| PETA and Objectification |
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 BonesLabels: animal rights, feminism, hate speech, intersectionality, objectification, personhood, violence, women
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| posted by The Venerable Vegan Empress @ 2:14 PM |
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| Thursday, March 12, 2009 |
| Blasphemy, beauty and animal rights |
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.
Labels: animal rights, animal testing, capitalism, consumerism, cosmetic surgery, cult of beauty, feminism, research
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| posted by The Venerable Vegan Empress @ 6:35 PM |
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| About Me |
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Name: The Venerable Vegan Empress
Home:
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If you have any ideas for an article here or would like to write a post, I'd love that! I work full time, volunteer and take classes at my city's university, so I don't work on this project nearly as often as I'd like. Just send me a comment with your contact info -- I approve all comments before posting, so if you include info that you don't want published let me know and I won't publish your comment.
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| Previous Post |
- Don't befriend sociopaths
- Thanks PETA, now I just spit all over everything.
- OMG, you guys, PETA is, like, TOTALLY feminist!
- This is what happens when you sell your soul
- Prediction
- PETA, please go fuck yourself
- PETA, just another welfare org....
- Like you care, PETA
- Care to elaborate, Daily Telegraph?
- Uh oh, does PETA know about this?
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