Animal rights movement

The animal rights 'movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement', is a social movement that advocates an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries. The argument from marginal cases is often used in animal rights advocacy which asserts that if certain humans with limited cognitive capacities are granted moral consideration, then non-human animals, who may possess different forms of intelligence or sentience, should also be afforded similar negative rights and moral consideration.

Terms and factions

All animal liberationists believe that the individual interests of non-human animals deserve recognition and protection, but the movement can be split into two broad camps. Animal rights advocates believe that these basic interests confer moral rights of some kind on the animals, and/or ought to confer legal rights on them; see, for example, the work of Tom Regan. Utilitarian liberationists, on the other hand, do not believe that animals possess moral rights, but argue, on utilitarian grounds — utilitarianism in its simplest form advocating that we base moral decisions on the greatest happiness of the greatest number — that, because animals have the ability to suffer, their suffering must be taken into account in any moral philosophy. To exclude animals from that consideration, they argue, is a form of discrimination that they call speciesism; see, for example, the work of Peter Singer.
Despite these differences, the terms "animal liberation" and "animal rights" are generally used interchangeably. Factional division has also been characterized as that between the reformist or mainstream faction and the radical abolitionist and direct action factions. The mainstream faction is largely professionalized and focuses on soliciting donations and gaining media representation. Actors in the reformist movement believe that humans should stop abusing animals. They employ activities that include moral shocks. It has been noted that the power of the animal rights movement in the United States is centralized in professionalized nonprofit organizations that aim to improve animal welfare.
The abolitionist faction believes that humans should stop using animals altogether. Gary Francione, a leader in abolitionism, formed his approach in response to the traditional movement's focus on policy reform. Some members of the abolitionist faction view policy reform as counterproductive and rely only on nonviolent education and moral persuasion in their activities. They see the promotion of veganism as a means of creating an antispeciesist culture and abolishing animal agriculture. Other abolitionists believe that animal advocates shouldn't rely only on the promotion of veganism and should use a social movement strategy focused on expressing political claims, like what do all the NGOs participating in the World Day for the End of Speciesism during which they express the claim that speciesist practices have to be banned. This political strategy based on the sociology of the social construction of problems is defended by the activist Anoushavan Sarukhanyan who wrote several articles on the issue. In addition to this theoretical disagreement regarding the strategy to be used by abolitionists, there is also a disagreement regarding the question of direct action. Some argue that direct action was used by all social movements so the animal rights movement should do the same, while others point out that these actions are perceived as violent by the public and therefore citizens feel less emotional connection with animal activists and in consequence less support the cause. The action repertory of the abolitionists who use direct action includes property damage, animal releases, intimidation, and sometimes even direct violence, aiming to change society through force. Despite this, the unorganized group of abolitionists who use direct action the most, the Animal Liberation Front, insists that all the direct actions they do to save animals shouldn't harm any human or animal. Nevertheless, many animal rights actors reject this faction, pointing to the fact that even if the actions of the ALF weren't violent they are still perceived as violent by the public and therefore represent a counterproductive tactic that invites repression while not necessarily economically or politically challenging the existent systems. There are also abolitionist groups focused around faith-based animal rights theory whose approach is characterized by more spirituality and the idea that we shouldn't harm other creatures unnecessarily. The animal rights movement includes also veganarchists, whose approach is characterized by a critique of capitalism on the grounds that it has led to mass nonhuman, human, and environmental exploitation. Such diversity, researchers have pointed out, is common to social movements and plays a role in sustaining their health.

History

The modern animal rights movement traces back to the animal protection movement in Victorian England, which was initiated by crusaders in response to the poor treatment of urban workhorses, the conditions under which they were exported for slaughter and their use, along with stray cats and dogs, for vivisection. Public awareness was raised by, for example, Anna Sewell's 1877 novel Black Beauty and by the pioneer Ada Cole who fought for humane conditions for horses destined for slaughter. Other early influences include: Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle, which drew attention to slaughterhouse operations; Henry Stephens Salt's treatises on nonhuman animal rights, which drew from human abolitionist arguments for recognizing the personhood of people considered to be property; and the short-lived Fruitlands agrarian commune, which required its residents to eat a vegan diet.
The contemporary movement is regarded as having been founded in the UK in the early 1970s by a group of Oxford university post-graduate philosophy students, now known as the "Oxford Group". The group was led by Rosalind and Stanley Godlovitch, graduate students of philosophy who had recently become vegetarians. The Godlovitches met John Harris and David Wood, also philosophy graduates, who were soon persuaded of the arguments in favour of animal rights and themselves became vegetarian. The group began to actively raise the issue with pre-eminent Oxford moral philosophers, including Professor Richard Hare, both personally and in lectures. Their approach was based not on sentimentality, but on the moral rights of animals. They soon developed a range of powerful arguments in support of their views, so that Oxford clinical psychologist Richard Ryder, who was shortly to become part of the group, writes that "rarely has a cause been so rationally argued and so intellectually well armed."
It was a 1965 article by novelist Brigid Brophy in The Sunday Times which was pivotal in helping to spark the movement. Brophy wrote:
Image:TomRegan.jpg|right|thumb|180px|Philosopher Tom Regan
The philosophers found this article and were inspired by its vigorous unsentimental polemic. At about the same time, Ryder wrote three letters to The Daily Telegraph in response to Brophy's arguments. Brophy read Ryder's letters and put him in touch with the Godlovitches and John Harris, who had begun to plan a book about the issue which was also partly inspired by Brophy's polemic. The philosophers had also been to see Brophy about the possibility of a book of essays on the subject. They initially thought that a book with contributions from Brophy, Ruth Harrison, Maureen Duffy, and other well-known writers might be of interest to publishers, but after an initial proposal was turned down by the first publisher they approached, Giles Gordon of Victor Gollancz suggested that the work would be more viable if it included their own writing. This was the idea that became "Animals, Men, and Morals". In 1970, Ryder coined the phrase "speciesism," first using it in a privately printed pamphlet to describe the assignment of value to the interests of beings on the basis of their membership of a particular species.
Ryder subsequently became a contributor to Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans, edited by John Harris and the Godlovitches, a work that became highly influential, as did Rosalind Godlovitch's essay "Animal and Morals," published the same year. It was in a review of Animals, Men and Morals for the New York Review of Books that Australian philosopher Peter Singer first put forward his basic arguments, based on utilitarianism and drawing an explicit comparison between women's liberation and animal liberation. Out of the review came Singer's Animal Liberation, published in 1975, now regarded by many as the "bible" of the movement. Other books regarded as important include philosopher Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights ; Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism by James Rachels ; Animals, Property, and the Law by legal scholar Gary Francione, Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals by another legal scholar Steven M. Wise ; and Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy by Julian H. Franklin.

Gender, class, and other factors

Another factor feeding the animal rights movement was revulsion to televised slaughters. In the United States, many public protest slaughters were held in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the National Farmers Organization. Protesting low prices for meat, farmers would kill their own animals in front of media representatives. The carcasses were wasted and not eaten. However, this effort backfired because it angered television audiences to see animals being needlessly and wastefully killed.
The movement predominately comprises upper-class and middle-class white female members, owing this to its associations with the Victorian English animal protection movement and American feminism and environmentalism movements. As such, the movement is widely associated in public spheres with women, femininity, and effeminacy. Public perception of the movement is influenced by gendered evaluations; movement outsiders tend to view activists as irrational by virtue of overly emotional sentiments. Aware of this, activists have strategically incorporated men into positions of leadership and theory production, in order to legitimize the movement and counter popular beliefs about the primacy of emotion in the animal rights movement. This tactic relies on the popular perception of men as rational and not given to emotion, and follows a trend in social movement activism that seeks to counter traditional associations with femininity and private spheres by emphasizing rationality, rights, and justice. In one case study, targets of anti-hunting activism used class and gender markers to evaluate activists' claims. Hunters' associations of irrationality with femininity and of inexperience in hunting and wilderness with white-collar positions constituted the reasons for their dismissal of activists' claims. In contrast, hunters framed hunting in logical, scientific, and altruistic terms, thus legitimating hunting, termed wildlife management, as a protective measure.
It has been noted that the composition of the movement may discourage the mobilization of particular demographics. A content analysis of magazine covers from highly visible animal rights organizations revealed that most featured members were white, female, and thin. With this, and with the composition of the movement being mostly white, female, and thin, it has been suggested that animal rights media depict an activist ideal-type with such characteristics, and that this may mobilize thin white females while deterring others. Racialized, sexualized, and size-focused campaign tactics may also serve to deter potential members from joining the movement. Racialized tactics include the appropriation of African slavery and Holocaust language and imagery, and have been deemed insensitive and impugned by nonwhite communities. In addition, the movement has maintained racist stereotypes about nonwhite individuals' predisposition toward animal cruelty; these stereotypes arose in post-slavery U.S. and Britain, where nonwhites were deemed by law and by society to have a tendency toward animal cruelty. Sexualization of "ideal" women is used as a mobilization tactic, but reduces support for ethics-based campaigns and may be counterproductive, alienating women that do not have "ideal" body types. Sizeism is used as a tactic to frame veganism as a healthy and positive lifestyle, aligning with a popular association of fatness with moral failure. These tactics may contribute to gender inequality because unrealistic and sexualized representations of women are linked to their societal devaluation. Its lack of diverse membership may decrease the movement's legitimacy and ability to mobilize, as members of marginalized groups are more likely to mobilize when they are represented in the movement. An inclusive movement with strong group solidarity would decrease opportunity costs associated with participating and thus serve to increase and sustain participation in the movement.