What Is Speciesism?

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Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals Media

Prejudice stems from the false belief that one being is superior to another because of a difference or differences between them. It might be the color of skin (racism), sex (sexism), sexuality (homophobia), or some other personal characteristic which is politicized, weaponized, and twisted into a justification for denying another their rights. Speciesism, then, is the belief that there is also hierarchy of worth among species and that one—our own—is at the pinnacle and superior to all others. Such a view works to legitimize the denial of rights for non-human beings.

Do Our Differences Indicate Superiority?

Most of us would answer unequivocally that a person’s skin color, country of birth, religion, sexuality, or physical ability / disability does not make them any more or less worthy of full human rights than anyone else. While still not shared universally, this view was very much the minority until relatively recently in our history. In 1832 in Great Britain, for example, women were specifically and deliberately excluded from voting and had to fight for more than 70 years to win back that right. Wealthy men had argued that differences between men and women were sufficient reason to exclude women (and working-class men) from the political process, but their real aim was to strengthen their own grip on power and capital by any means possible. Today, while we condemn those tactics and misogynistic views, we may be unaware that the very same worldview is widely held in respect to animals. In almost all parts of the world, people are taught to see humans as more important, valuable, and worthy than all other animals and continue to cite our differences as reasons for denying them their rights. In doing so, they legitimize great harm to sentient beings, entire non-human communities, and the natural world. As we shall see, this prejudice also does great harm to ourselves.

How Did Speciesism Start?

Author and attorney, Jim Mason uses the word “dominionism” to describe the worldview of human supremacy. He writes that dominionism is “the view or belief held by one species, Homo sapiens sapiens that it has a divine right—a God-given license—to use animals and everything else in the living world for its own benefit.”

Dominionism encompasses speciesism, but it also goes further in that it treats the entire natural world as no more than a resource to be exploited. As we face a future marked by climate catastrophe and mass extinction, we can see just how damaging dominionism has been.

In his powerful book, An Unnatural Order, Mason argues that this worldview began 10,000 years ago with the dawn of agriculture. Before then, he says, “people regarded animals with fascination, awe, and respect because they were lively and active, and were thought to harbor many of the powers and forces of nature. Those people had a strong sense of kinship with animals, which gave them a sense of belonging in the living world. Animal agriculture—or the enslavement of animals for human benefit—turned it all upside down. Animals had to be taken down off their pedestals so that they could be controlled, worked, and bought and sold. The old sense of kinship with the living world was replaced with fear, loathing, dread, and alienation.”
From that time, animals came to be seen as currency, not kin. The word ‘capital’ comes from the Latin capitālis meaning “head of cattle” and those who owned, exploited, and traded in animals traditionally controlled the wealth and the power. It is not hard to see how the hierarchy of worth began: first animals and the natural world were commodified, then people of color and women were, too.

Q: Why do we treat dogs as friends but pigs as deserving only of slaughter? A: Speciesism.

What Does Speciesism Mean for Animals?

Speciesism has allowed the confining, mutilation, subjugation, torture, and slaughter of sentient beings on a scale that is quite literally unimaginable. If humans killed each other at the same rate we kill animals, we would be extinct in 17 days.

The greatest harm comes from within the food industry where tens of billions of land animals are slaughtered every year for their meat, milk, and eggs, alongside trillions more aquatic animals—all for products that we do not need to thrive. But speciesism has also led to the horrors of circuses and zoos, rodeos, vivisection laboratories, dog and bull fighting, bear baiting, horse racing, and many other deeply harmful and degrading practices.

When we remember that every animal affected is a sentient being with an inner life, family connections, community, preferences, a personality, and a desire for bodily autonomy, we start to realize the scale of the injustice done.

When hens have bodily autonomy they explore, flap, dust-bathe, roam, scratch in the earth, and sunbathe

A Hierarchy Imposed on Animals

It is not just that humans place themselves at the pinnacle with all other animals below them; we create a hierarchy among the different species too. Where each species ‘ranks’ differs in different parts of the world, depending on the ways in which cultures have traditionally treated and exploited particular species. For example, in the west, as psychologist Melanie Joy summarizes in her excellent book’s title, it is common to “love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows”. In other cultures, it is common to eat dogs, to never eat pigs, and to treat cows as sacred. Such cultural discrepancies affirm that there is no immutable intrinsic value attached to a given species, and how animals are ranked and therefore treated, depends entirely on the extent to which we wish to commodify and exploit them.

Do All Discriminations Stem from Speciesism?

Mason believes that speciesism is humans’ longest-held discrimination out of which other prejudices grew. He writes: “Racism grows out of misothery—hatred and contempt for animals and nature. We transfer our misothery to people whom we regard as closer to animals and nature than us. Sexism, or male supremacy, is a fixture of the patriarchal culture invented by the warring, herding societies who dominated the rise of Western civilization in the ancient Middle East. Homophobia is one of the by-products of patriarchal culture, which sees human breeding as so all-important that every kind of sexual gratification is outlawed unless it places male sperm near female ova. Colonialism is dominionism applied to other peoples and their lands. In its earliest stages, Europeans regarded native Americans, Africans, Pacific Islanders, and others as “savages” and sub-humans—animals, in other words. The Europeans’ misothery guaranteed that they would be treated accordingly—as slaves.”

Sociologist, Dr. Corey Wrenn of the University of Kent says we cannot be sure which discrimination came first but agrees that they are all connected. She writes: “With imperfect research implements and cloudy or adulterated historical record, it is difficult to determine which oppression takes precedence in the larger history of humanity’s evolution, be it sexism, speciesism, classism, or something else entirely. Perhaps they are best understood as interlocking systems.”

We have much in common with our animal kin if we take the time to look

The Interconnectedness of Oppressions

Understanding speciesism and acknowledging its connection to other oppressions can take a shift in our thinking. After all, most of us have been brought up with the view that animals are commodities—pets to be bought, flesh to be eaten—rather than living beings in their own right.  It was when watching Vegucated that drag queen and LGBTQIA+ theater founder Paul Burgess suddenly recognized he’d long had an ethical blind spot and that realization hit him really hard. “Anti-hate and anti-violence were a much broader spectrum than I had acknowledged,” he admits.

Today, Burgess calls for a broader understanding of discrimination and urges each of us to play our part in dismantling it. “Activism starts within,” he says. “It starts with calling yourself out for the things you accept. Every being on this beautiful planet of ours has the right to not be forcefully bred like cows are—the right not to live in foul and cramped conditions like chickens are. Every being has the right to a life without violence, abuse, and oppression. EVERY being!”

Paul and Stuart aka The Vegan Queens on speciesism and homophobia

A Life Free From Discriminations

Just for a moment, imagine what our world would be like if the most power-hungry people did not disseminate the worldview that others are less than them. Imagine what our world would be like if we did not let them.

Propagating and disseminating the belief that there is a hierarchy of worth has led to violence and subjugation of both humans and non-human animals on a vast scale. When we see how these isms and obias feed and embolden each other—when we recognize that homophobia, racism, sexism, and speciesism all stem from the same source—we are able to abandon that toxic worldview and make choices that can liberate us all.

And, like Burgess, we can change. We can educate ourselves, be honest about our own unwitting role in harming others and make changes that can liberate all sentient beings from the tyranny of the few. As Christopher “Soul” Eubanks explains: “It is crucial for anyone doing social justice work to have an intersectional framework—because no group can achieve true liberation in isolation.”

In other words, we are all in this together and our actions matter.

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