At the beginning of January I wrote about Karen Davis attacking Peter Singer over a review that Singer wrote of Joan Dunayer’s book, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation. Now, Dunayer herself has written a very strong response to Singer accusing him of being “speciesist” in his review.
In her book, as Dunayer writes in a letter to Vegan Voice, Dunayer argues that “Truthful, nonspeciesist language — especially nonspeciesist legal language — would end nonhuman oppression.”
Singer dismissed that argument, writing that, “It is not speciesist to think that this event [the 9/11 terrorist attacks] was a greater tragedy than the killing of several million chickens, which no doubt also occurred on September 11, as it occurs on every working day in the United States.” Singer argued that it was appropriate to use different language to describe the deaths of animals than that used to describe the deaths of human beings.
Dunayer completely disagrees. She writes,
“It is not speciesist” to consider the murder of several thousand humans “a greater tragedy than the killing of several million chickens,” Singer contends. It certainly is. . . . Also, Singer’s disrespect for chickens is inconsistent with his espoused philosophy, which values benign individuals more than those who, on balance, cause harm. By that measure, chickens are worthier than most humans, who needlessly cause much suffering and death (for example, by eating or wearing animal-derived products).
The people who died on 9/11 led lives that were morally inferior to chickens. What a lovely philosophy.
Dunayer criticizes Singer for limiting protection for animals to those species who are self-aware. As Dunayer notes, it is impossible to determine the extent to which non-human species are self-aware. So, she concludes, we should consider them all self-aware. She contends, for example, that jellyfish should be consider creatures possessing rights. After complaining that Singer unjustly refers to animals with the third person pronoun, ‘it,’ Dunayer writes,
Similarly, although he has advocated moral consideration for all sentient beings, he excludes some nonhuman animals from who, thereby dismissing them from consideration. “Am I just showing prejudice if I confess that I find it difficult to think of a jellyfish as a ‘who’?” he asks. Yes, he is. . . . “Let’s wage the winnable battles first, before we go to the barricades for dust mites,” Singer mocks. Language that shows respect for dust mites and jellyfishes doesn’t impede efforts to liberate monkeys or pigs. The main obstacle to such efforts is a human-centered, hierarchical view of animals. By requiring that nonhumans demonstrate human-like traits, and by ranking nonhumans accordingly, Singer perpetuates speciesism and endlessly postpones nonhuman emancipation.
Got that? In Dunayer’s schema, animals are not to be granted rights because they may be sentient or self-aware, but simply because they are alive. Anything that is classified as an animal is a creature possessing rights, all the way down to jellyfish and similar creatures.
Source:
Letter to the editor of Vegan Voice. Joan Dynayer, January 2002.