Veg-Heads

Like Animals Essay by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau of Compassionate Cooks

I feel very strongly about how our use of language reveals our prejudices and biases, particular when it comes to the oppressed, whether the oppressed be human or nonhuman. In fact, the language of oppression is fundamental to the oppression itself. In order to establish your superiority over a group, first you need to subordinate that group, and one of the basic ways we do this is through the use of language.

The Nazis knew this well. As part of their “Final Solution,” a euphemism itself for the extermination of an entire people, they used language that demonized and dehumanized the Jews and other "enemies" of the State.” The Nazis portrayed the Jews as 'parasites,' and 'disease.’ They also called them pigs, dogs, vermin, and swine.

With the subjugation and suppression of African Americans came a language which labeled them 'chattels,' 'property,' and 'beasts.’ Even earlier than this were descriptions of Africans by the Europeans who called them brutes, monkeys, animals, and apes.

Similarly, the extermination of a significant population of "American Indians" was accompanied by the use of dehumanizing language defining them as "non-persons," "savages," and "Satan's partisans." The were also called ugly, filthy, inhuman beasts, swine, pigs, dogs, baboons, gorillas, and orangutans.

Belittling humans by calling them animals isn’t reserved only for certain groups of humans. In fact, any human who acts unfavorably or violently towards another human being is called “an animal.” It’s ironic to me, because animals don’t do to each other – or to humans – any of the horrific things we do to each other – and to other animals – for fun, for pleasure. When people act violently towards one another, it seems to me that it would be more accurate to say they’re acting like humans. But, of course we don’t do that, because we’re the almighty human being, whose primary fault that separates us from all the other animals – in my opinion – is our arrogance. It is our arrogance that enables us to subordinate, exploit, abuse, and kill animals, and it is our arrogance that enables us to justify this behavior on the basis of – well, our arrogance. On the basis of what we call our human right to do so. Right, that’s called arrogance.

And so we set up this system so that humans are superior, and animals are inferior, and so if we want to deem another group inferior, all we need to do is call them “animals” as the ultimate insult. One of the problems is that we are denying our own animal-ness; we don’t like to remember that we, too, are animals, and so in reality, though we shouldn’t mind being called what we are (i.e. animals), we do mind, because non-human animals have been denigrated, beaten down, insulted, and exploited for so many centuries that it is the worse thing to be called “an animal.”

I believe that the denigration of any people as a type of animal is a prelude to violence and genocide. Many anthropologists believe that the cruel forms of domesticating animals at the dawn of our agricultural society – about ten thousand years ago – created the model for the exploitation of other human beings. In other words, in domesticating, confining, and controlling other animals, we firmly planted violence into the heart of human culture.

What really breaks my heart is when I hear people from groups who have themselves been oppressed usurp the language of the oppressor and refer to animals in a derogatory way. I was watching Spike Lee’s documentary “When the Levees Broke” about the inexcusable response to the victims of the floods caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and a few of the people being interviewed talked about how difficult it was to see their fellow human beings being treated like animals, like cattle, reminiscent of what it was like when their people were slaves. The implication is that treating animals in an insulting or abusive way is acceptable but treating human animals that way is unacceptable. To my mind, neither is acceptable, and more than that, the acceptability of one leads to the acceptability of the other. The abuse of one leads to the abuse of the other. Here’s what freed slave Frederick Douglass had to say about that.

He wrote, “There is no denying that slavery had a direct and positive tendency to produce coarseness and brutality in the treatment of animals, especially those most useful to agricultural industry. The master blamed the overseer, the overseer the slave, and the slave the horses, oxen, and mules, and violence fell upon the animals as a consequence.”

In order to prove your superiority, you have to establish that you’re superior over someone else. You have to set it up so that there is someone underneath you. It’s not enough to just say “I rule!” “I’m the best!” You have to rule over something, over someone. And so humans have created a very convenient dichotomy between ourselves and the rest of the natural world. If we could tame the wild, then we do rule – literally. And so that’s what we’ve done. Animals have been put under our heels and are at the mercy of humans and our centuries-old inferiority complex. That’s what it comes down to. It comes down to arrogance and lust for power. And in order to keep up this pretense, we have to control the public perception so that it’s aligned with us. This is where our use of language is particularly helpful. The other way this is done is through fear.

By painting a picture of a savage, wild, vicious, unpredictable, violent animal kingdom, who is in every way inferior to the civilized, intelligent, rational, predictable human, you convince people that to NOT control, tame, and kill animals is a very dangerous prospect. It’s set up such that it seems like we’re actually protecting one another from the dangerous, wild animal. And then we create even sillier justifications for our speciesism by saying that those crazy animal rights activists want rights for animals at the expense of humans – as if we’re asking for driver’s licenses for dogs and political positions for cats.

In reality, it is not our fear that animals will take over the world that compels us to keep them down. It’s our fear that we won’t be able to keep controlling the world if we stopped enslaving them. It’s fear – not strength – that drives us to eat animals, make them perform for us, give them diseases and break their bodies in the name of science, wear their skins, wear their fur, put them in cages. It doesn’t take strength and courage to do these things. It’s our fear that we’re not adequate enough – just as humans – not better but part of. Imagine that. Imagine a world where human beings were humble enough to recognize that we all play a part in this world. That we all contribute and that we don’t have to keep others down to demonstrate how strong we are. We have many, many other reasons to believe we’re strong. We are strong. But in our treatment of animals, we continually display how weak we are. We continually demonstrate the worst of what humans are capable of.

So in addition to painting animals as wild and dangerous, we say all sorts of other things about them, using ourselves as the barometer. They’re not intelligent like we are. They can’t empathize like we can. They don’t have the complexity of language we have. They don’t have the ability to reason like we can. They don’t have souls like we do. And all sorts of other nonsense to keep us propped up and to keep them down. The funny thing about all of this is that we’re writing this story. And as long as we want to keep the power we’ve created, we have to keep telling this story. But what would happen if we were to create a different set of criteria to judge the value of non-human animals? What if we stopped measuring them against humans, in which case they’ll always fall short. We’re the authors of this story.

What if our criteria were different? I mean imagine if we determined your worthiness by how fast you could run. On how high you could fly. On the ability to climb mountains without rope but only four hooves. Depending on who’s telling the story and what the focus is, there are so many ways in which animals are superior to humans, and I don’t mean that in such a way as to suggest that we should let non-human animals run for President (um…I take that back). But that is to say, if we changed the story, changed our criteria, and were willing to humble ourselves a little, our relationship with animals would be very different. We would be much happier. The Earth would be much healthier. And the animals would be at peace.

Now perhaps some of you are saying that I’m envisioning some Utopian society where lions starve rather than kill gazelle. If that’s what you think I’m saying, think again. There is no breach of ethics when a carnivore kills his prey. But there is a breach of ethics – our own ethics – to have the choice to kill or not to kill and to choose the former. To have the choice between hurting someone and not hurting someone and choosing the former. There is a breach of ethics in a thought system that believes everything and everyone is here for us.

There is an essay written by Laura Moretti I would like to share with you. It has been a favorite of mine for many years, and I hope you’ll appreciate it as much as I do. Laura Moretti is a long-time activist and writer. Her website is http://www.lauramoretti.info/, where you can read her work and see some really amazing photos and videos, including video of the replacement calves for dairy herds confined outside in little pens in 100-degree heat and some other videos. She’s also the publisher of Animals Voice Magazine at http://www.animalsvoice.com/, and I recommend you check out this information-packed website and subscribe to the magazine if you can.

Here is Laura’s essay called Like Animals:

"Why do you suppose you like animals so much?" was the million-dollar question put to me Christmas Eve (and one I hadn't provoked). I knew my family was expecting me to say something like, "I like animals because they're cute and cuddly and furry and fun to play with." But instead I said, "I like animals because they are honest."

My observation triggered a facetious comment from one of my brothers. “About what?"--as if honesty were merely about telling the truth, and everyone knows animals can't talk! His notation was met with hearty laughter; for once, they thought they'd repaid me for all the discomfort I'd caused them at other family gatherings.

"I like that animals don't pretend to be someone they're not," I continued in my reply, hushing the crowd. "To quote a phrase, 'Dogs don't lie about love.' Animals don't fake their feelings. I like that they're emotionally fearless."

We were lounging on sofas and armchairs after our feast and present opening. Coffee was being served, so I seized the opportunity. "I like animals," I added, "because they only take out of life what they need. They don't abuse their environment, annihilate species, pollute their water, contaminate the air they breathe. They don't build weapons of mass destruction and use them against others-particularly members of their own species. I like animals because they have no use for those things, or for war or terrorism. They don't build nations around genocide."

My uncle seemed momentarily lost in thought. He had been born and raised in New York City. "That's because they don't know any better," a brother-in-law argued. "They don't do those things because they don't know how."

"A pride of lions doesn't get together," I countered him, "and decide how to exterminate zebras-their very source of nourishment. I don't think it's because they don't know how. I think it's because it's counter-productive." They laughed. "

I also like animals," I continued," because they don't punish themselves for their perceived inadequacies. They don't dwell on things of the past, nor use them as excuses for behavior in the present. And they don't plan to live some day in the future, they live today, this moment, fully, completely, and purely. I like animals because they live their lives with so much more freedom than humans live theirs."

"That's because they don't think," one of my cousins offered.

"Is that the difference?" I wondered. "'I think therefore I'm cruel, destructive, insecure, abusive?' You meant to say they don't think the way we think." The room had become strangely quiet. I was amazed at how closely my family was listening, despite the occasional grunt to the contrary.

"I like animals because they don't bow down to imaginary gods they've created, nor annihilate each other in the name of those gods; gods, they say, who are all-knowing and all-loving and just. I like animals because they only know how to give unconditional love and implicit trust. I mean, animals either extend those things to you or they don't; there are no shades of gray. They have the best of what makes us human and, as one observer put it, "none of our vices.'" "And thank God," someone injected.

"Lastly," I added, remembering why I was an animal rights activist, "Animals are the most victimized living creatures on earth; more than children, more than women, more than people of color. Our prejudice enables us to exploit and use them, as scientific tools and expendable commodities, and to eat them. We do to them any atrocity our creative minds can summon. We justify our cruelties; we have to or we can't commit them. I like animals because they don't do to themselves or to others the things we do to them. And they don't make excuses for unethical actions because they don't commit unethical acts."

"And finally," I finished, "I like animals because they're not hypocrites. They don't say one thing and do another. They are, as I've said, honest. Animals-not humans-are the best this planet has to offer." And, interestingly enough, despite my soapbox rant, not a one of them made a snide comment or a hint of laughter. The conversation actually rolled into shared stories of animals they've known, stories of animal loyalty and intelligence, their humor and innocence. And it was me who'd become the listener with the occasional comment: "Now, if only humans could only be, well, like animals." And that is why I fight the good fight; I rise on behalf of the best among us.”