by David C. Arenas
A VAGUE WORD IS COINED
In 1970, Richard Ryder coined the term SPECIESISM and used it in a pamphlet with the intention of opposing experiments on animals, saying it makes no sense that other animals are excluded from the protections offered to humans just on the basis of species membership alone.
However, Ryder didn't really define it, and it was Peter Singer who popularized the term in his book called "Animal Liberation" (a deceiving name for a book that promotes utilitarianism and welfarism), and defined it as "a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species."
So the term was meant to draw an analogy with other prejudices like racism and sexism. However, since it was so imprecisely defined, and the meaning is so vague, nobody can tell with certainty what can or cannot be considered "speciesist". Neither Ryder, nor Singer are vegans... isn't that telling? Words to defend the victims of any sort of oppression need a very precise meaning, otherwise they're useless. Sometimes even counterproductive, as I will explain.
ANTI-VEGAN FINGER-POINTING
The word SPECIESISM is so vague that most well-known anti-vegans have used the hazy concept against what they understand as "vegans".
World renowned astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson (NDT) says that "people who don't eat animals" and use a no-kill trap to catch mice and release them into the wild, doom the mice to be consumed by predators. He says it's best to let them live in the basement so they can stay there up to 6 years (utilitarian mindset from a non-vegan). NDT goes on to blame vegans of cutting up 50 trees to build a house, "and the tree is home to birds, and insects and fungus..." (sentient fungus?). And here comes the cherry on top: NDT says that vegans choose to kill plants instead of consuming milk and honey, which according to him (ignorant about veganism as can be), "don't involve any killing"; the fact that vegans don't care about trees as much as animals is SPECIESIST to him... I know, he doesn't even understand that plants are not sentient and do not have interests, so even under Singer's definition of "speciesism" that "argument" would not hold water...
So, is the term "speciesism" being instrumental to animal emancipation here, or adding to the confusion?
Then there's broadcaster Piers Morgan, who every single time he invites a vegan to his show brings up the bees. He implies that vegans are SPECIESIST because "by consuming almonds and avocados, vegans are killing the bees".
Then, we also have the viral video of Ted Nugent, the guitarist known for killing animals for fun, "calling out" vegans on Joe Rogan's podcast (quite an anti-vegan platform) for tofu-related deaths: "Every squirrel, every ground-nesting gopher, every ground-nesting bird, every snake, every turtle, every animal in that field that's turned into tofu is slaughtered by the gazillion." (the trite crop-deaths excuse).
So to re-cap, neither the guy who coined the term, nor the one who popularized it, are vegans; they're welfarists. Even the most anti-vegan people make use of the very same term against vegans. Therein lies the importance of very precise, well-defined terms with concrete meanings. Veganism is the rejection of animal exploitation. Exploitation is the use of animals as a means to an end, as resources. Do vegans exploit animals? NO; are vegans speciesist? ...Maybe... Who knows?... Depends on what you mean by that...
So if a vague term enables all sorts of tu quoque fallacies, is it useful?
MISREPRESENTING TO POLITICIZE
If speciesism is unclear, just see what happens when someone adds the prefix "anti-" to it (often with selfish intentions). Wikipedia defines it as:
antispeciesism (uncountable)
(philosophy, ethics) An ethical stance which opposes the unjustified consideration or treatment of sentient individuals who are not classified as belonging to a certain species.
What is “unjustified consideration or treatment"? Who can determine it, non-vegans as well? So people change veganism for "anti-speciesism", but the meaning of the term gets even more obscure and dubious.
Pierre Sigler, a documentalist, former member of the editorial board of Les Cahiers antispécistes, says that "anti-speciesism" is political and a demand for justice while veganism is not.
"A demand for justice is of a fundamentally political nature: it is a request for legal, institutional or social changes. An appeal to virtue is apolitical: it asks people to act more virtuously, to modify their individual behaviour."
I agree that veganism is apolitical, but it is NOT about moral virtues. It's about moral OBLIGATIONS and, as such, it demands justice.
Sigler says that "appealing to virtue" (a.k.a. promoting veganism) can be effective on an individual level, but that "only political and economic changes have had a visible impact". He ignores the fact that legal changes in free societies are a reflection of the moral progress within them. Laws against racism can never be sustainable in a racist society. The success and sustainability of the slavery abolitionist movement was only possible through small gradual changes in individual ethics.
What does Sigler have in common with the aforementioned thinkers? He's NOT a vegan:
How's veganism apolitical? I doubt there will ever be laws against using feathers or animal hair that fell on the ground. However, the deontological nature of veganism does indeed reject ALL animal use for human ends on principle because the end purpose is that humans stop regarding other animals as resources (animal emancipation). Veganism is about animal ethics, and it cannot be enforced by law, but held and internalized by individuals. It's our moral duty (NOT a virtue), as moral agents, to question our perception of others and the actions that result from said perception. "Anti-speciesists" call this mindset "dogmatic"; "if it doesn't cause suffering, what's wrong with it?"
Françoise Blanchon, co-founder of the French-speaking theoretical and activist magazine Les Cahiers antispécistes in 1991, writes against what she calls "vegan purity":
"I am not strictly vegan. It would certainly be better in absolute terms if I changed the brand of margarine I use to one that does not contain whey (‘lactoserum’) [...] if I sold my woollen jumpers, and so on. [...] the animals who die every day in slaughterhouses do not care about how clean my hands are."
And she gets even more utilitarian about "vegan purity":
"Honey is prohibited because it is an animal product but sugar is acceptable (aside from the issue mentioned above) despite the fact that insects are killed when cane is grown and harvested. A soy dessert coloured using cochineal (extracted from crushed insects) is rejected but we should not hesitate to drive miles to buy another more vegan brand. Insects crushed on the way do not count because they are not ingested".
Either "anti-speciesists" do not understand veganism, or they reject the concept...or, even worse, both. This is not an overgeneralization. Let's keep on looking:
CHASTISING MORAL PATIENTS
Jeff McMahan, American philosopher and writer, talks about the "ethical extinction of carnivors" (apparently based on the writings of Oscar Horta, a Spanish philosopher) via sterilization, and is quoted as a reference in "antispeciesist" papers. McMahan is a vegetarian, not a vegan (surprise, surprise), and both, Horta and him are, guess what...utilitarians.
"One is to bring about the gradual extinction of some or all predatory species, preferably through sterilization, and with the exception of the human species, which is capable of voluntarily ending its predatory behavior"
McMahan also talks about "benign carnivorism":
"imagine a version of benign carnivorism based on genetically modifying animals so that they would not only die in a healthy state on a predictable schedule but also enjoy longer lives than their unmodified counterparts"
The problem with this for McMahan would be the price of this "benign meat" that would make it a luxury and it would be objectionable in terms of "equality" (for humans, of course).
"HUMANS ARE ALSO A SPECIES"
Last, but not least, because I'm running out of space, we have the usurpers of the animal cause who want to make animal platforms about their own human cause.
Jacqueline Guzman, director of campaigns in Argentina at Generation Vegan, writes:
"Anti-speciesism understands animals as oppressed political subjects that must be considered morally, since the species to which a being belongs is not a relevant characteristic when determining their interests."
Seems like "anti-speciesism" is the same as veganism. The term political subjects is kind of distracting, but then...
"veganism is an elitist movement without a class perspective. In its desire to be understood, veganism can even fall into biologicism, making use of metaphors or unfortunate comparisons between the political subjects of feminism and non-human animals, and even be offensive to those who have experienced situations of abuse."
I don't mind being compared to a non-human animal, it might be an issue for "speciesists", though... who knows? After all, nobody can really determine what is and what isn't a "speciesist"... but I know one when I see one...
FINAL THOUGHTS
Anti-speciesism is a deceitful and obscure term that seems to have the purpose of not only undermining the moral imperative of veganism, but also including anything and everything the founders of veganism premeditatedly omitted from its definition so that veganism would be instrumental to animal emancipation: vegetarianism, "pragmatism", politics (far-left, mostly, but also anarchism), suffering-based utilitarian calculations ("sentientism"), human intervention in predation, human causes, human health, environmentalism, "sentient" AIs, aliens, you name it, after all, "we are all animals"... a phrase mostly uttered for human convenience.
Ironically, "anti-speciesism" rejects veganism as a moral baseline, they deride it as a matter of "personal purity" or moral virtuosity (instead of moral obligation), you know, "we're all equal, but some are more equal than others". Most of the "anti-speciesist" academic referents are not even vegan, just like some group of sordid televangelists who preach what they do not practice, only that in this case, nobody bats an eye, they even get praised! It's all fine in the "anti-speciesist" world, as long as the victims are not human, of course, of course.
The most conniving way of sabotaging a movement is to pose as if you were part of it, while eroding its whole foundation. (inside job)
Written by David C. Arenas.
Views are that of the author. David is a seasoned vegan activist. You can connect with David on his Instagram page
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