What is Wrong with (Animal) Rights?

Philosophical debates over the status of animals have exploded such that a survey of the literature is overwhelming. With the exception of a few Continental philosophers, a gander makes it clear that today most philosophers discussing animals still do so in terms of animal suffering or animal intelligence, which in turn leads to discussions of animal rights or animal welfare.¹ Most of these discussions revolve around the ways in which animals are—or are not—like us and therefore should—or should not—be treated like us. Throughout this literature, animal rights are likened to (or distinguished from) civil rights for women and people of color. What these philosophers do not consider when developing analogies between women and animals is that the exploitation and denigration of people traditionally involve viewing them as animals, treating them like animals, and justifying their “inferior” status on the basis of their supposed animality or proximity to the animal. This was (and is) the case with women, who traditionally have been considered closer to nature and to animals, especially in their reproductive and child-rearing functions. This was the case with slaves, who were treated like cattle or oxen to be bought, sold, and used on plantations. This was (and is) the case with people of color who have been stereotyped as hypersexual, immoral, or irrational like animals. The proximity between oppressed peoples and animals is not just a contingency of history but a central part of Western conceptions of man, human, and animal.² As a result, overcoming the denigration of oppressed peoples, and revaluing them on their own terms, may require attention to the man–animal opposition as it has operated within the history of Western thought.

The Right to Remain Silent

Considering animal rights points to the limits of rights discourse and to the need to revise our thinking about rights. Animal rights and animal welfare arguments are usually based on analogies with human rights and human welfare. For example, Peter Singer argues that all animals are equal and that “the ethical principle on which human equality rests requires us to extend equal considerations to animals” because animals, like humans, have interests, pains, and pleasures (1975, 1, 5, 7). Singer does not argue for animal rights but, rather, for animal welfare and animal liberation based on analogies with women’s liberation and the civil rights movement. He argues that disregard for animals is “speciesism,” just as disregard for women or African Americans is sexism or racism. As many feminists have argued, however, there is more than an analogy among sexism, racism, and speciesism. Even today, the patriarchal association between women and animals is evidenced by the various names used to degrade women, including pussy, kitten, bunny, beaver, bitch, chick, fox, vixen, and cow (see MacKinnon 2004; see also Adams 1990; Adams and Donovan 1995; Dunayer 1995). The connection between the degradation of women and traditional views of animals existing for man’s use complicates any easy analogy between women’s liberation and animal liberation. If women’s subordination is in part justified by comparing them to animals, then perhaps one reason why women’s liberation has continued to meet with resistance and continued to bump up against the “glass ceiling” is because of our attitudes toward animals and the deep patriarchal associations between women and animals. In other words, the relation between the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of women and other oppressed groups is not just a matter of analogy. Rather, the conceptual opposition between man, on the one side—the civilized side—and animal, on the other—the natural or barbaric side—plays a central role in the oppositions between man and woman, white and black, civilized and barbaric, and so on (see Adams 1990). Until we address the denigration of animals in Western thought, on the conceptual level, if not also on the material economic level, we continue merely to scratch the surface of the denigration and exploitation of various groups of people, from playboy bunnies to prisoners at Abu Ghraib who were treated like dogs as a matter of explicit military policy.

Unlike Singer, Tom...