Remember that we don’t need to use the actual word “speciesism” in order to talk about the ideas of speciesism and why we oppose speciesism. We can talk about respecting all life, not using anyone without their consent, obtaining freedom for all, or accepting everyone for who they are. And we can illustrate speciesism: “Would it be OK for us to chain a human to a pole outside of a restaurant when we go inside to eat? If not, then why is it OK for us to chain a dog or a horse to the pole?” I think these are all simple ways to spread the ideas of speciesism without necessarily using the word.

In the seven months since writing this post, I have “cooled down” a little in terms of how I feel toward animal welfare groups. “Reducing suffering” is still not what veganism means to me, and I’m still not interested in spreading that message. But I have shifted a bit away from criticizing the welfare groups to, instead, spending time building up a positive alternative (L.O.V.E.) to more fully embody what I feel about veganism.

thanks for this discussion!
steve

Enough about me.

I agree with the general philosophy of this website but this post not so much. In my opinion a vegan world will arise through a multitude of different philosophies and approaches. YES it’s good to combat speciesism. And it’s good to combat oppression and dominance. But it’s ALSO good to reduce suffering. And it’s also good to prevent unnecessary harm.

Of course, you Steven are also against suffering and unnecessary harm but it seems like you think talking about them too much takes the focus away from speciesism, which is more fundamental. On the other hand I’d say talking about reducing suffering makes people MORE RECEPTIVE to later on hearing about speciesism. I know that’s how it worked for me in my journey from meat-eating through vegetarianism to veganism.

We NEED to keep educating people about speciesism. But if Vegan Outreach is talking more about reducing suffering that’s OK too. Speciesism is a newer concept and a bigger word and might not be the ticket in every context. If I ever have a child I’ll start telling her from at least age 2 she should be nice to animals. Learning about speciesism will come later in her developmental process.

In conclusion, if John Q. Public wakes up tomorrow and decides to become a anti-speciesist vegan activist–I’ll be overjoyed! But if John Q. Public wakes up tomorrow and decides to go from eating a hamburger every day to a hamburger every week–well that’s still one step closer to a vegan world and I’m still going to be happy about it.

A brief note: You used the phrase “moral obligation” in your comment; this is something I wrote about in “Activism as Being, Not Doing.” I feel like “moral obligation” implies hierarchy–we are obeying some moral authority or moral code. This view can be very deadening in my experience, making activism a chore. Debates of philosophy and ‘ethics’ have generally started to feel tiresome to me. My view more recently has been very simple and based in my gut feelings: I want freedom and respect for everybody. I don’t even view this as ‘morals’ really–it’s just what I feel.

peace and love!
steve(n

p.s., Good point about rights being granted by the more powerful to the less powerful.

In any case, I think that the idea of refraining from causing unnecessary harm would include not exploiting, confining, restricting the freedom of or killing animals. These are all forms of harm. The problem with the “rights” argument is that rights are things that the powerful grant to the less powerful. The rights of those in power will always trump the rights of those who are not in power. But from a moral standpoint, everyone, regardless of their position or power status, has a moral obligation to not cause unnecessary harm to others.

What is necessary, in my view, is defined as that which is needed in order to survive. Therefore, if I am stranded on an island and the only source of food is a (chicken, dog, human etc.) then it is not immoral for me to kill and eat an animal (including a human animals) because doing so was necessary for me to survive. By the same token, when healthy vegan options are readily available, confining and killing an animal (no matter how “humanely” it is done) is unnecessary. Therefore, any amount of harm that animal (and her family) experiences from being killed is unnecessary.

The moral concept of not causing unnecessary harm is not aimed at finding “humane” ways to harm others. It is focused on ending the exploitation of others, since exploitation of any kind is harmful.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Yes! I agree that making the distinction between necessary and unnecessary harm is a problem for the reasons you describe (the one in the power position/the owner, gets to decide if the harm is necessary to the one not in the power position/the owned).

As I understand the context of this discussion, it was about the use of the term “unnecessary harm” in the COMMUNITY post and on the veganpamphlet.com site. In my original comment, I was trying to bring out the point that you articulated, namely that the word unnecessary in the term unnecessary harm is problematic because it is defined by the one in the power position.

As to point 2, my comment was probably worded imprecisely. I would characterize the difference between the SSA example and the harm to non-human animals as one of consent: the politician has given their consent to the SSA to do what is needed to protect them, while the non-human animal has not given their agreement to be raised/confined/killed. The former is a more bilateral relationship while the latter is unidirectional. Again, this all was in the context of the problem of including the concept of necessary vs unnecessary when discussing harm.

“Who gets to decide the fate of those who are oppressed?” Again, poor wording on my part. What I was trying to get at is that I look to the power relationships embedded in these various theories (animal welfare, animal rights). Under the animal welfare view, the oppressors (humans) still get to decide, e.g., who is suffering and whose suffering is more important. If we go by unnecessary harm (again, this was in reference to what Steven was originally writing about), then humans again get to decide what is necessary harm vs unnecessary harm.

Finally, one comment about the analogous statement you brought up: “As long as those doing harm to sentient beings have something to gain by doing so, those beings will not be liberated.” I don’t think this is entirely accurate because the harm is enabled by the harmer’s power over the harmed. I think both power and a perceived economic/psychological gain need to be present. Nibert writes about this in more detail in Chapter 1 of Animal Rights/Human Rights.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. I am finding this discussion to be both interesting and helpful.

Victor

First, to Victor, who brought up necessity:

1) necessary v. unnecessary harm
2) who gets to decide?

With respect to 1, the view as I understand it is that necessary v. necessary harm is already problematic. Our system of legal welfare takes it as given that animal use is necessary, and thus defines necessity with respect to whether a certain *practice* is “necessary” to properly exploit property as a means to the property owner’s ends. If the practice is gratuitous and it causes harm, then that harm is unnecessary and thus “cruel”. If the practice is not gratuitous (and much of the time this is guided by industry standards), then the harm inflicted is deemed necessary. Obviously this is a problem.

Any exploitive use of animal property is harmful to that nonhuman person. It’s *not* just because this involves pain and suffering, though in almost every case it does, but also because it involves disrespecting that being’s moral right not to be used exclusively as a resource. It means treating a who as an it, a being as a thing. That’s the harm.

As for necessity, at the very least we can demonstrate that it is technically possible for humans to survive without eating or wearing animals or without using them for entertainment. As with the pamphlet, I’m leaving vivisection and other biomedical use off the table. That question is handled in a different way by Francione, and I don’t have time to get into it, unfortunately. He writes about it in Intro to Animal Rights and Animals as Persons, if you’re interested.

With respect to 2, Victor writes “I think it’s always questionable for somebody to make the decision about whether or not they think harm to another is necessary or not. It’s downright dangerous in situations of vast power imbalance, as is the case in our relationship with other animals.”

I’m not sure I entirely understand, Victor. I mean, there’s a lot of ways to interpret this, since we’re speaking somewhat abstractly. Harm is by definition bad, so we should not be harming anyone. But causing someone pain is not necessarily harming them. If, for instance, a Secret Service agent tackles a politician to prevent him/her from being assassinated, there is likely to be some pain, but the SSA has not harmed the politician. It’s in the politician’s best interests to be caused a little pain to avoid being killed. But nonhuman animals are not being caused pain for their own individual good. They are being caused pain because it benefits those that are exploiting them. Even if there is no pain in the process, though, the animals are being harmed because this use is an *exploitive* use; it’s being done entirely in the interests of the owners, so that they may benefit, not in the interests of the animal property, who are merely means to their owners’ ends.

Victor also asked, “Who gets to decide the fate of those who are oppressed?”

I don’t really know what this means. I mean, legally the owners of property decide the fate of their property. Does that mean, who gets to decide whether animals are given the right not to be property or stay property? (given that we’re the ones that made them property, I’d say it’s up to us to undo that, if nothing else).

If animals are liberated, freed from their property status, then we do have some other issues, like who gets to decide the fate of animals that are living freely or still living under the care of those responsible for their welfare, but that is different than asking who decides the fate of animals who are “oppressed.” So, I think I’m confused.

Finally, Victor wrote that, “As long as it’s the oppressor, who always has something to gain from the oppression, I do not think there can be liberation.” I think from what I wrote above, you can see that I agree that animals will never be free as long as they are being used in exploitive ways, though I have reason to think that using the word “oppressed” in reference to moral patients (as opposed to oppressing moral agents) is problematic, but that is another conversation for another day (like, maybe this summer!). In the meantime, substituting “harm” leads to an interesting result: “As long as those doing harm to sentient beings have something to gain by doing so, those beings will not be liberated.”

Quickly now to Steven:

*Exploiting* animals is *always* a harm to them (even if it doesn’t explicitly cause them pain), and therefore it is wrong (though from this we shouldn’t construe that it’s *always* wrong to *use* another being–there’s an important distinction between use and *exploitation*). If something doesn’t cause harm to another being, how then do you determine that it is wrong?

Does that clarify it at all?

In answer to your first question, abolitionist animal rights is a requires the respectful treatment of *all* sentient beings, so I’m not sure how it be incompatible with L.O.V.E.’s mission (substituting “harm” for “oppression” and “harmed” for “oppressed”, perhaps): “L.O.V.E. works to promote the understanding of speciesism as a form of oppression and veganism as a positive, effective response to eliminating speciesism and achieving the liberation of animals oppressed by speciesism.” Abolitionists seek to end speciesism, too, and of course veganism is its baseline.

“The foundational premise of the abolitionist perspective is veganism. As far as I’m concerned, veganism is the single most important form of social activism that anybody can engage in. And it’s not a lifestyle thing. It has to do with a commitment to non-violence, and it has to do with a commitment to the respect for persons, whether they are human persons or non-human persons.”

http://www.gary-francione.com/francione-rochester-lecture.html

What I’m hearing from you is that Francione’s approach is not necessarily incompatible with ours. That is, even though Francione focuses on “unnecessary harm” and on legal status, his work doesn’t stake claim as a “be-all end-all,” and therefore an individual like yourself can follow his philosophy AND simultaneously follow L.O.V.E.’s mission, maybe as another perspective or as added context. Did I read you correctly?

I have to admit, at this point, I still feel skeptical. Along with Victor’s concerns–which I share–I’m worried about this sentence in the BVA pamphlet (2nd page of text): “In all but the most extraordinary circumstances, [other] animals cannot be used by humans without being harmed.” I interpret this sentence as saying, “BECAUSE it harms other animals to use them, it’s not ethical to use them.” But L.O.V.E.’s message is that unconsenting use is fundamentally wrong, not wrong BECAUSE it causes harm. I hope I’m not just nitpicking unnecessarily. My point is that, with this sentence in the BVA pamphlet, you seem to be entertaining the notion that, if we COULD use them without harming them, then it would be O.K., because harm is what fundamentally matters, not unconsenting use. Granted, you’re not going as far as Peter Singer and saying that it’d be ethical to create chickens without brains so we could exploit them endlessly without their suffering. But you seem to leave the possibility open to certain kinds of exploitation.

By fundamentally opposing all unconsenting use of others, L.O.V.E.’s stance is directly one of anti-exploitation, instead of anti-exploitation via anti-harm (which could break down under “extraordinary circumstances”).

I hope I am not just making stuff up, and I hope I am giving you (and Francione) a fair reading/analysis. I’d certainly love to hear more discussion in either case.

peace & love,
steven