Human and Nonhuman Rights Together.

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Wednesday May 20, 2009 14:34

by Roger Yates

Considering the notion of human animal and nonhuman animal rigjhts.

Gary Francione, US law professor, animal rights philosopher and founder of Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach explains why human and nonhuman rights are perfect together.

After law professor and animal rights philosopher, Gary L. Francione, gave a lecture on animal rights at a community centre, a woman approached him saying she was a volunteer at a centre for battered women and rape victims. She said that she was very sympathetic about what happens to animals but that she was completely consumed by her work for women that she did not know how to find time to work to become involved in animal rights.

Animal advocates are used to this sort of thing: “There are too many human problems in the world that we have to solve first before we think about animals,” “Let’s work on world peace first; we can then work on animal rights.”

Francione asked the volunteer whether she has time to eat, whether she wears clothes and uses shampoo and other products. “Yes, sure,” she replied. “But what does that have to do with it?”

Francione explained that it has everything to do with it. That if she really took the animal issue seriously, all she needed to do was to stop consuming them, wearing them, using products that contain them or that are tested on them, or patronizing any form of entertainment that used animals. He said that, if she never did anything else on the animal issue, her act of going vegan, and the example that she would set for friends and family, would themselves constitute important forms of activism that would in no way interfere with her work for women.

For, no one is saying that those who campaign for human rights should stop doing so and should instead campaign for animal rights. Becoming a vegan does not require that you stop advocating for abused children, battered women, or against war. Furthermore, Francione argues that it is a mistake to see issues of human and animal exploitation as mutually exclusive. On the contrary, he suggests, all exploitation is inextricably intertwined. All exploitation is a manifestation of violence. All discrimination is a manifestation of violence.

Citing Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, who noted that, “As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields,” Francione argues that as long as we tolerate violence of any sort, there will be violence of every sort. As long as humans regard it as normal to slaughter animals for food for which there is no justification other than the trivial pleasure we get from eating or using animals, they will regard it as normal to use violence when they think that something more important is at stake.

Francione points out that, “it goes the other way as well”, stating that, “as long as we tolerate racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination, there will be speciesism.” He says that animal advocates oppose speciesism because it is like racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination. Our opposition to speciesism logically implies a rejection of these other forms of discrimination. He notes that Gandhi once said: “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

If we want a nonviolent world, Francione argues, we must embrace nonviolence in our own lives. Veganism is an important element of a nonviolent life as there can be no doubt that all animal foods and animal products are the result of violence.