Speciesism

Scholars including philosopher Peter Singer and botanist Brent Mishler have compared speciesism with racism and sexism, arguing that all three involve giving unequal moral weight to individuals on the basis of group membership.^[51][52] Critics of the comparison argue that racism and sexism concern relations among human beings and differ in important ways from moral claims about nonhuman animals.

In the 2019 book Why We Love and Exploit Animals, Kristof Dhont, Gordon Hodson, Ana C. Leite, and Alina Salmen discuss psychological links between speciesism and other prejudices such as racism and sexism.^[53] Marjetka Golež Kaučič connects racism and speciesism, arguing that discrimination based on race and species is strongly interrelated and that human-rights discourse has provided part of the legal background for the development of animal-rights arguments.^[54] Kaučič further argues that racism and speciesism are connected to questions of freedom, both collective and individual.^[54]

In one study, 242 participants completed the Speciesism Scale; higher scores on this scale were associated with higher scores on measures of racism, sexism and homophobia.^[55] Other studies have found associations between support for animal exploitation and endorsement of racist or sexist views.^[53][55][56] Researchers have suggested that these relationships may be partly explained by social dominance orientation.^[57]

Psychologists have also studied speciesism as a measurable attitude, using Likert-scale instruments. These studies have found that speciesism is a relatively stable construct, varies between individuals, and correlates with political and personality variables.^[58] Speciesism has been reported to show weak positive correlations with homophobia and right-wing authoritarianism, and somewhat stronger correlations with political conservatism, racism and system justification. Moderate positive correlations have been found with social dominance orientation and sexism. Social dominance orientation has been proposed as an underlying factor in many of these correlations; controlling for it reduces all correlations substantially and makes many statistically insignificant.^[58][59] Speciesism has also been found to predict levels of prosociality toward animals and food choices.^[58]

Writers who regard speciesism as unfair to nonhuman animals have often discussed mammals and chickens in the context of research or farming.^[45][60][61] There is no generally agreed line within the movement about which species should be treated equally with humans, or should receive additional protection: mammals, birds, reptiles, arthropods, insects or other organisms. The issue is complicated by findings such as those of Miralles et al. (2019), who argued that human empathy and compassion tend to decrease with evolutionary distance; the more distant an organism is from humans, the less likely humans are to recognize themselves in it or to be moved by its fate.^[62]

Some researchers have argued that if speciesism is treated in social psychology as a form of prejudice, defined as an attitude, emotion or behaviour implying negativity or antipathy toward a group, then laypeople may perceive it as related to more familiar forms of prejudice. Research suggests that laypeople tend to infer similar traits and beliefs from a speciesist as they would from a racist, sexist or homophobe. It is less clear whether speciesism is linked with non-traditional forms of prejudice, such as negative attitudes towards overweight people or towards Christians.^[63]

Psychological studies have also argued that people tend to "morally value individuals of certain species less than others even when beliefs about intelligence and sentience are accounted for".^[58] One study identified age-related differences in moral views of animal worth, with children holding less speciesist beliefs than adults. The authors argued that these findings suggest that speciesist beliefs develop socially over an individual's lifetime.^[64]

Piers Beirne considers speciesism the ideological basis of the animal–industrial complex, including factory farms, vivisection, hunting and fishing, zoos and aquaria, and wildlife trade.^[65] Amy Fitzgerald and Nik Taylor argue that the animal-industrial complex is both a consequence and a cause of speciesism, which they describe as a form of discrimination comparable to racism or sexism.^[66] They also argue that obscuring meat's animal origins is part of the animal-industrial complex under capitalist and neoliberal regimes.^[66] Speciesism is used in this literature to describe the belief that humans are entitled to use non-human animals.^[66]

Sociologist David Nibert states,

The profound cultural devaluation of other animals that permits the violence that underlies the animal industrial complex is produced by far-reaching speciesist socialization. For instance, the system of primary and secondary education under the capitalist system largely indoctrinates young people into the dominant societal beliefs and values, including a great deal of procapitalist and speciesist ideology. The devalued status of other animals is deeply ingrained; animals appear in schools merely as caged "pets", as dissection and vivisection subjects, and as lunch. On television and in movies, the unworthiness of other animals is evidenced by their virtual invisibility; when they do appear, they generally are marginalized, vilified, or objectified. Not surprisingly, these and numerous other sources of speciesism are so ideologically profound that those who raise compelling moral objections to animal oppression largely are dismissed, if not ridiculed.^[67]: 208

Some scholars have argued that all forms of animal production are rooted in speciesism, because they reduce animals to economic resources.^[4]: 422 Built on the production and slaughter of animals, the animal-industrial complex has been described as the material form of speciesism, with speciesism becoming "a mode of production".^[4]: 422 In his 2011 book Critical Theory and Animal Liberation, J. Sanbonmatsu argues that speciesism is not simply ignorance or the absence of a moral code towards animals, but a mode of production and material system connected with capitalism.^[4]: 420

Philosopher Carl Cohen stated in 1986: "Speciesism is not merely plausible; it is essential for right conduct, because those who will not make the morally relevant distinctions among species are almost certain, in consequence, to misapprehend their true obligations."^[68] Cohen writes that racism and sexism are wrong because there are no relevant differences between the sexes or races. Between people and animals, he states, there are significant differences; his view is that animals do not qualify for Kantian personhood, and as such have no rights.^[69]

Nel Noddings, the American feminist, has criticized Singer's concept of speciesism as too simple and as failing to take into account the context of species preference, as concepts of racism and sexism have taken into account the context of discrimination against humans.^[70] Peter Staudenmaier has argued that comparisons between speciesism and racism or sexism are trivializing:

The central analogy to the civil rights movement and the women's movement is trivializing and ahistorical. Both of those social movements were initiated and driven by members of the dispossessed and excluded groups themselves, not by benevolent men or white people acting on their behalf. Both movements were built precisely around the idea of reclaiming and reasserting a shared humanity in the face of a society that had deprived it and denied it. No civil rights activist or feminist ever argued, "We're sentient beings too!" They argued, "We're fully human too!" Animal liberation doctrine, far from extending this humanist impulse, directly undermines it.^[71]

A similar argument was made by Bernard Williams, who observed that a difference between speciesism on the one hand and racism and sexism on the other is that racists and sexists deny input from people of another race or sex when considering how they should be treated. By contrast, when the issue is how animals should be treated by humans, Williams observed that only humans can discuss the question. Williams also noted that being human is often used as an argument against discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, whereas racism and sexism are seldom used to counter discrimination.^[72]

Williams also argued in favour of speciesism, which he termed "humanism". He asked why properties grouped under "personhood" should be morally relevant to the destruction of a certain kind of animal while being human is not. Williams argued that to reply that these properties are valuable to human beings does not undermine speciesism, because human beings also value human beings. In his view, the only way to resolve this would be to argue that those properties are "simply better"; but then, he wrote, one must justify why they are better if not because of human attachment to them.^[72][73] Christopher Grau supported Williams, arguing that if properties such as rationality, sentience and moral agency are used as criteria for moral status instead of species membership, it must be shown why these properties should be used rather than others. Grau argues that saying they are simply better would require an impartial observer, an "enchanted picture of the universe", to establish them as such. He concludes that these properties have no greater justification as criteria for moral status than species membership does. Grau also argues that even if such an impartial perspective existed, it would not necessarily rule out speciesism, since an impartial observer might have reasons for humans to care about humanity. He further argues that if an impartial observer existed and valued only the minimization of suffering, it might be horrified by the suffering of all individuals and prefer humanity to end life on the planet rather than allow suffering to continue. Grau concludes that those who endorse values derived from an impartial observer do not appear to have seriously considered the consequences of such an idea.^[74]

Douglas Maclean agreed that Singer raised important questions and challenges, particularly with his argument from marginal cases. However, Maclean questioned whether different species can be fitted into human morality, noting that animals are generally held exempt from morality. Maclean writes that most people would try to stop a man kidnapping and killing a woman but would regard a hawk capturing and killing a marmot with awe and criticize anyone who tried to intervene. He suggests that morality makes most sense within human relations, and becomes less applicable the further it moves from them.^[75]

The British philosopher Roger Scruton regarded the emergence of the animal rights and anti-speciesism movement as "the strangest cultural shift within the liberal worldview". Scruton argued that rights and responsibilities are distinctive to the human condition and that it makes no sense to extend them beyond the human species. He argued that if animals have rights, then they also have duties, which animals would routinely violate, such as by breaking laws or killing other animals. He accused anti-speciesism advocates of "pre-scientific" anthropomorphism, attributing traits to animals that are, he said, Beatrix Potter-like, where "only man is vile". He described this as a fantasy, a world of escape.^[76]

Thomas Wells states that Singer's call for ending animal suffering would justify exterminating every animal on the planet in order to prevent future suffering, since they could no longer feel pain. Wells also argues that by focusing on the suffering humans inflict on animals and ignoring suffering animals inflict on one another or that results from nature, Singer creates a hierarchy in which some suffering matters more, despite claiming to be committed to equality of suffering. Wells further argues that the capacity to suffer, Singer's criterion for moral status, is a matter of degree rather than an absolute category. Wells observes that Singer denies moral status to plants on the grounds that they cannot subjectively feel anything, despite reacting to stimuli, and argues that there is no indication that nonhuman animals feel pain and suffering in the same way humans do.^[77]

Robert Nozick notes that if species membership is irrelevant, endangered animals would have no special claim.^[78]

The Rev. John Tuohey, founder of the Providence Center for Health Care Ethics, writes that the logic behind the anti-speciesism critique is flawed. He argues that although the animal rights movement in the United States has been influential in slowing animal experimentation and, in some cases, halting particular studies, no one has offered a compelling argument for species equality.^[79]

The World Day for the End of Speciesism (WoDES) is an international event intended to denounce speciesism,^[92][93] held annually at the end of August since 2015.^[94] The observance was initiated in 2015 by members of the Swiss association Pour l'Egalité Animale (PEA), which coordinates the international day annually.^[95][96]

The World Day Against Speciesism is observed annually on June 5.^[97]