Hello, Alex:
I am not familiar with any present controversy concerning your Animal “Rights” National Conference so I cannot address your specific comments. As you know, I stopped many years ago participating in the “mainstream” movement because the mainstream is polluted by the toxic discharge of welfarism and “happy" exploitation.” The movement stopped being an animal rights movement (if it ever was) way back in the 1990s, and it has just been getting worse ever since. Indeed, several years back, I agreed to speak at your conference and I did so on the condition that I could be clear and open about my view that the “movement” had sold out and fully embraced the “happy exploitation” approach. You agreed, and I came and spoke.
I was horrified by the extent to which welfarism was all over the place; there was no talk of animal rights and abolition—except from me. And your sponsors had such a negative reaction—the folks from Mercy for Animals were very upset, as I recall—that you wrote to me and said that the Conference would no longer provide a forum for the rights/welfare debate and that you saw the future with people (you named) like Paul Shapiro, then with HSUS, and Erica Meier of Compassion Over Killing that has, over the years, perfected selling out animal interests to an art form. There is an animal rights movement but it has absolutely nothing to do with the nonsense that I saw at the Animal “Rights” National Conference. So you, in effect, opted for “canceling” the whole rights as abolition vs. welfare/happy exploitation debate. I was disappointed, but not surprised. Your sponsors were threatening to withdraw support. It was business.
As for discrimination in the "movement" as a general matter, the one thing I can say is that the “movement” is one big cesspool of sexism and misogyny and always has been. The exploitation of women by “movement” men is the secret that everyone knows. A few of the more egregious characters have been publicly outed and a few have been fired or have left their jobs in these wealthy animal charities, and some of those are now continuing to exploit animals in various animal-related businesses. But we all know that the “activists” who got outed for their sexist/misogynistic activities are merely representative of a huge problem.
And the sad thing is that women have helped to exacerbate the problem as a result of identity politics, which is part and parcel of the "woke" phenomenon. PETA started with the “I'd rather go naked than wear fur” nonsense back in 1989, and reinforced the idea that perpetuating the patriarchal commodification of women was a legitimate strategy to help animals. Indeed, I recall very well raising this with Carol Adams and Feminists for Animal Rights back in 1989/90 only to be told that FAR would not come out against this because PETA was co-run by a woman, Ingrid Newkirk. This was an early example of the corrosiveness of identity politics. FAR did not come out against PETA's sexism until the winter of 1994/spring 1995 issue of the FAR newsletter. PETA's misogynistic imagery is now many times worse, and the movement has never confronted this issue seriously or sought to recognize that as long as we think of women as equivalent to “meat,” we will continue to see animals as meat. When the “movement” reinforces the idea that a primary contribution women make “for the animals” is to take off their clothes and sit in cages or distribute veggie dogs on Capitol Hill, or feign masturbation with egg plants for PETA Super Bowl ads that thankfully never run on TV but are very popular with the more pubescent “activists,” it does not augur well for a movement that takes women seriously and that rejects sexism.
In any event, the “movement” is sexist and it has failed miserably to address the problem. In 1990/91, I was invited to address the Summit for the Animals, the yearly gathering of the “leaders” of the movement on the issue of the whether the animal rights movement should take a position on sexism in light of the talk I had given at the National Alliance for Animals on sexism and speciesism. I don’t recall whether you were at the Summit that year but you very well may have been. It took place that year in Boston. I gave my talk and the Summit Chair, the late Cleveland Amory responded to all of my arguments and positions in a pithey way—“the movement does not have a position on sexism.” I disagreed then; I disagree now. The movement I belong to certainly does.
As for your claim that there is race and gender discrimination against white males in the movement, the last time I took a look at the “movement” (or society generally for that matter) white men still seem to be in charge of things. What I was referring to in the essay is more that "woke" animal activists are promoting transparently speciesist positions and reinforcing the idea that the validity/soundness of moral ideas depends on *who* is speaking and not *what* is being said. Ironically, an early manifestation of this occurred in the 1990s when feminists, including Adams, who promoted the “ethic of care” claimed that rights were patriarchal and we needed to abandon universalizable rules in favor of a context of care. The problem is that that position is transparently speciesist in that all feminists maintain that certain interests, such as the interest of a woman in her bodily autonomy, require protection that is not dependent on a context of care but on protection that does *not* depend on consequences—that is, protection protected by rights. I have never met a feminist who says that the morality of rape depends on the context. But the ethic of care, at least as far as its articulation in the 1990s (I confess I haven't followed it), made animal use depend on a context of care and this allowed for animal exploitation in certain circumstances. To point this out was not to get a reasoned argument back in reply, but to have one's position dismissed simply on the basis of sex—the 1990s equivalent of the "mansplaining" charge that we hear frequently nowadays.
So the “woke” nonsense is not new. It’s just intensified in various ways and for various reasons. Indeed, I remember that when I spoke at your Conference only a few years back, I was about to start my debate with Bruce Friedrich, who could always be depended on to trash veganism as a moral imperative, and one of the Wokians came up to me and asked why she should be interested in two white males “mansplaining” about the issue of abolition vs. “happy exploitation.” I suggested that she listen to the ideas and decide on matters of substance rather than to focus on who was speaking. She looked puzzled. When you have a “movement” that dismisses substance and links the permissibility of speech or the validity of viewpoints with identity, you don’t have a movement. You have a cult.
The point of the essay was to say that the easy volleys of “mansplaining” and “privilege” and “white fragility”—and all of the Wokecaublary—has little to do with substance and is nothing more than a strategy to focus attention on the speaker rather than on what is being said in an effort to shut down discussion. That is what I was referring to.
I hope this clarifies my point.
Best regards,
Gary
Gary L. Francione
Board of Governors Professor, Rutgers University; Vising Professor of Philosophy, University of Lincoln
