Toward Liberation: For Animals And Language
By Mickey Z.
02 April, 2013
Worldnewstrust.com
“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” - George Orwell
In her poem, “The ABCs of Atrocity,” my friend Vi Ransel writes:
Animals are the means we use to teach
our children not only the basics of speech,
but to give them the tools they're going to need
to begin elementary reading.We ask "What does the cow say?"
"P is for pig" we tell them
while their animal friends scream in agony
as we mechanically and mercilessly slaughter them.
Later in life, of course, we are intensely conditioned on how not to use language when it comes to animals. Certain words, it seems, are reserved solely for human issues. To follow, are three words I believe we must re-imagine.
Slavery
Whenever someone uses the word “slavery,” it almost automatically conjures up images of the African slave trade, the Middle Passage, and plantations in the American South.
However, slavery is currently the world’s fastest growing criminal industry -- a multi-billion-dollar global enterprise with estimates as high as 27 million modern-day human slaves. This includes sex trafficking, debt slavery, forced labor, and much more.
In other words, the word and the concept of slavery are not and have never been exclusively reserved for African-Americans.
In fact, the word and the concept of slavery should not and should never be exclusively reserved for humans. For example:
>> When a horse is locked into a small stable and only taken out when forced to pull a human-filled carriage through Central Park in order to procure income for its owner (sic), by any sane definition, that’s a form of slave labor.
>> When a female dog is confined in a cage at a puppy mill and forced to produce litter after litter of puppies to be sold for the financial gain of her owner (sic), undeniably, it’s a form of slavery.
To declare that these examples (and far too many more to detail here) do not constitute slavery is to betray one’s speciesist bias and expose a glaring compassion blind spot.
Modern human debt slaves in Asia endure a vastly different experience than, say, African slaves on a plantation in 1825. To acknowledge this reality doesn’t make either oppressed human more or less of a slave.
Similarly, to call an animal a “slave” is not to imply that the animal’s experience is indistinguishable from that of a human slave. It is to simply acknowledge that a sentient creature is being confined and abused in the name of someone else’s profit.
Rape
A March 31, 2013 NBCNews.com headline blared: “Mama bear? National Zoo artificially inseminates giant panda.”
Within that article, we learned that a “a team of scientists and veterinarians” at the National Zoo in DC had “artificially inseminated the Zoo's female giant panda after natural breeding failed to occur.”
We also learned that the zoo named this giant panda “Mei Xiang” and she was artificially inseminated with “a combination of fresh and frozen semen taken from the zoo's male panda, Tian Tian.” In case anyone is curious, “the fresh semen was taken earlier (that) morning.”
Meanwhile, all across the planet -- 24 hours a day -- “artificial insemination” is the norm for the dairy industry. Here’s how the folks at HumaneMyth.org explain it:
“All forms of dairy farming involve forcibly impregnating cows. This involves a person inserting his arm far into the cow’s rectum in order to position the uterus, and then forcing an instrument into her vagina. The restraining apparatus used is commonly called a ‘rape rack’.”
Rape Rack.
Despite all this (and so much more), when the word “rape” is used to define such practices, it is often met with indignation by those claiming this word is the sole domain of humans -- non-male humans, almost exclusively.
But if we can all agree that, say, the rape of a man in prison is not identical to the far more prevalent rape of women (or any non cis male), why should the use of this word remain off limits to the unique circumstances of, say, a giant panda or dairy cows?
(It’s illuminating to witness how we feel comfortable giving a captive, conscious creature a human name but carefully withhold the use of certain words as not applicable to non-humans.)
To use the word “rape” when discussing the forced insemination of a non-human does not invalidate or downplay the horrific trauma of human rape. To declare otherwise is to betray one’s speciesist bias and expose a glaring compassion blind spot.
Holocaust
In a similar, self-imposed restriction, the term “holocaust” has become uniquely associated with humans of Jewish ethnicity or heritage.
While the scores of communists, Roma, homosexuals, and dissidents murdered in Nazi concentration camps would obviously not concur with such limited word usage, what are we to say of the ubiquitous packed trains, warehousing, experimentation, gassing, and targeted slaughter of non-human earthlings?
It has been estimated that in all the wars and genocides in recorded history, a total of 619 million humans have been killed. That same number -- 619 million animals -- are murdered every five days for “food” by an industry that is the number one source of human-created greenhouse gases.
Is this not a holocaust, as in “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale?”
Why would it disrespect the nightmarish experiences of humans to use the same word to describe a practice that is threatening all life on the planet?
"Auschwitz,” wrote Theodor Adorno, “begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals."
To declare otherwise is to betray one’s speciesist bias and expose a glaring compassion blind spot.
The Language of Liberation
Why do I believe it’s important to use such language when discussing the institutional abuse of non-humans?
As Vi Ransel also explains in her poem, when we move on from “p is for pig,” the corruption of language teaches us to rename “dismembered body parts” as
beef, pork, mutton, nuggets, cheeseburgers, etc.
Speciesist euphemisms normalize the violence and thus make it easy and acceptable for activists discussing ways of dismantling the rape culture to do so while, say, drinking a milk shake.
If words like slavery, rape, holocaust, etc. (appropriately) evoke terror, fear, outrage, and a passionate desire for change, imagine how deep a connection we could make with the natural world if we “allowed” such language for conversations about non-humans.
To surrender the privilege -- yes, privilege -- of speciesism is a profound act of total liberation from hierarchal restraints. It is to embrace a revolutionary lifestyle: 24/7.
Angela Davis, someone who knows a little about challenging privilege, has declared that being a vegan is “part of a revolutionary perspective -- how we not only discover more compassionate relations with human beings but how we develop compassionate relations with the other creatures with whom we share this planet.”
In the narration of the essential film, Earthlings, we’re told:
“By analogy with racism and sexism, the term ‘speciesism’ is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species … Like us, (animals) are the psychological centers of a life that is uniquely their own. What these animals are due from us, how we morally ought to treat them, are questions whose answer begins with the recognition of our psychological kinship with them.”
Please allow me to repeat the two steps I’ve offered in previous articles:
>> Reject speciesism.
>> Respect and defend all earthlings.
If these modifications sound unlikely or even impossible to you: Try tapping into your vast imagination, seeing past the limited choices we’ve been programmed to accept, and choosing to view such adaptations as not only eminently feasible but also as undeniably necessary.
Surrender the privilege of speciesism, embrace empathy for all sentient beings, and allow compassion to guide your choices.
#shifthappens
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Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook.
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