What “speciesism” is and why you should care about it. A thread.

Speciesism is a term referring to species-based discrimination and in the case of humans and non-humans, the exploitation of non-human life to serve human interests.

This term was developed by Richard D. Ryder in 1970 as a means of spreading awareness about animal experimentation in the UK but wasn’t popularized until 1975 with the release of Peter Singer’s book “Animal Liberation”.

Now I know some of you are thinking “this is just a knock off of concepts like racism and sexism why should I take this seriously” well here’s why:

Humans across the world view themselves not only superior to non-human animals, but many of us have convinced ourselves that we are not animals at all, that we are some separate group distinct from the other lifeforms on this planet.

When we wish to denigrate other members of our species we often use terminology used for other species (i.e. calling black people monkeys and calling women bitches, female dogs)

This is dehumanization and dehumanization as a concept is directly tied to the lack of value that is placed on non-human life. By denigrating non-humans as beneath us we pick and chose which members of our own we see as lesser and put them in this category.

It goes deeper than this however. While I must stress that all humans are speciesist this is to varying degrees and non-western cultures have historically had closer relations and greater respect for non-human life which baffled Europeans upon initial contact with them.

This contributed to the discrimination that these people would later go on to experience by the hands of colonial powers carrying the idea that these people were less civilized for cooperating with non-humans as opposed to dominating them.

But (and this is where the meat of the conversation lies) some of you, a lot of you, must be thinking “but non-humans are inferior to humans my life is more important than chickens and cows and how dare you even suggest something like that”.

To that I simply say, why? What tangible differences between humans and non-humans make our lives more worthy of moral consideration? What differences are morally relevant?

Is it intelligence. Often I find that people deem non-humans as lesser because “they are less intelligent than us”. This comes with several egregious problems.

1. Intelligence is not considered morally relevant within our species. Assuming you’re a decent person, someone severely lacking in intellect is not an excuse to deem them as lesser morally.

I say, assuming you’re a good person because this is actually something that we do see among human beings in the form of ageism and ablism. Cognitively disabled people and small children are across the board treated and seen as less than because of their lack of intelligence.

Decent people acknowledge this as wrong and seek to stop it so shouldn’t we also seek to stop this issue in our treatment and regard to non-human life?

This actually brings me to my next point

2. The idea that non-humans are universally less intelligent than humans isn’t entirely true. There is more evidence every day that expands our understanding of the minds of non-humans and the way in which they think that is continuously dispelling these notions.

Furthermore intelligence doesn’t have a strict and consistent definition. IQ testing is the way in which most people colloquially use to determine intellect but this system runs into various and more importantly, it has highly racist origins.

What is the purpose in using a system that was designed to be oppressive to continue to judge others by?

There is a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of humanity and our place in this world. Humans are animals. Our ancestors are dead. These other lifeforms aren’t “less evolved” they are our contemporaries.

It doesn’t matter how smart they are or if they can do exactly what humans can do they have the will to live, many of them suffer, they have families and care about their own same as us.

Singer refers to this as the principle of “equal consideration of interests”. Simply put, if we share interests with a being than those interests should be equally protected.

Dogs and cats don’t have the desire to vote so there’s no need to grant them the right to vote but they do have a desire for freedom and health and to avoid pain and suffering just like us therefore their pain and suffering shouldn’t be less important than that of humans.

One might say that this is “just the way it is” and to a certain extent that is true, we are evolved to be weary of certain species as a means of self preservation but this is what is called the naturalistic fallacy. Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s okay.

Discrimination as a whole is to a certain extent natural as we all have innate urges to protect the in group over the out group but you know what so is cooperation. Humans and non-humans once lives in harmony before there’s no reason why we can’t again.

We know better so we can do better. Much of what we put non-humans through that we see as necessary isn’t actually necessary (and I’ll discuss this in more depth in another thread).

Most people to some extent agree with the idea of animal welfare but there is a difference between animal welfare and animal rights/liberation. I and others do not wish to merely improve the quality of life for non-humans I want them to be fully brought into our moral continuum.

I want to one day reach a day where we don’t regard non-humans as inferior to humans. I understand that this is scary for many humans but our fear is less important than the lives of these beings.

The reason I have chosen to write this thread now of all times is because I’ve seen a lot of takes on this app about how human suffering cannot be compared to non-human suffering and this is simply not true.

While a statement like “the meat industry is exactly like the trans Atlantic slave trade” is dragged an inaccurate to say there are zero correlations between human tragedies and non-human tragedies is disingenuous at best dangerous at worst.

It’s especially heinous given that many of these human tragedies themselves are rooted in dehumanization. Human beings that engage in animal cruelty at a young age often go on to become abusers later on in life. Connections are there even if you don’t want to see them.

It’s looking like we are in for a societal upheaval this decade and if the culture is going to drastically change then our conception of animal rights should change with it.

Animal rights are not an extension of human rights, human rights are animal rights.