the lengths you’ll go to hide from the other
So far, I've read the killed chimpanzee referred to as ‘it’ (don't call him by his name then, asshole). And then there's this tidbit from this article:
The drawing is a reference to the mauling of a woman by a pet chimpanzee, which was then killed by police. In the cartoon, one of the officers tells the other, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."
Not who? God forbid it has its own personality, preferences, and thoughts. And then there's this:
Experts say the unusually human relationship would have been confusing for any animal. It may have also played a role in Travis' savage attack Monday on Herold's friend, 55-year-old Charla Nash of Stamford.
"This is a crazy relationship," said Stephen Rene Tello, executive director of Primarily Primates, a sanctuary for chimps in Texas. "He was probably very bonded with her. I can kind of see it in his eyes this is his surrogate mother."
No shit? Some thing that can pick up our sign language (yet we can't decipher theirs), can make tools, can do a lot of things when taught – like a child – and yet, it's really just an oddity because it's capable of doing human things, feeling human emotions, bonding to some other being, but it's not human? Weird, right?
Who would ever fucking expect anything like that from something with blood, bones, muscles, nerve endings, brains, thoughts, emotions, ability to feel pain, and a will to live? Something we're modeled after? Most of all that from this thing that happens to be one of our closest relatives?
(And apparently the fact that Travis was drugged with Xanax beforehand is being ignored.)
I hate sounding angsty in my writings, but fuck humans.
S/he said…
Hi Kaiser. I’m having an extremely difficult time understanding exactly how animal rights activists expect humans to treat animals as equals when we haven’t even evolved mentally to the point where we’re treating each other as equals. In America, there are still minorities getting murdered by racist whites. In some countries in Africa, females have their genitalia completely mutilated for no reason. In Saudi Arabia and Iran, homosexuals get publicly beheaded. In Afghanistan, a woman must not show one square centimeter of her flesh, lest she be stoned to death. In Brazil, drug lords use children as young as 5 to run their operations, and murder them in cold blood if something goes wrong.
Witnessing the atrocities that occur on a daily basis to humans by humans proves further that we are all still in the infancy stages of our mental evolution, and yet to hold animals in the same light as ourselves — the very same animals that have been hunted and farmed for tens of thousands of years — is completely unfathomable to me. I reckon it will at least be hundreds, if not thousands, of years before all life on this planet is regarded in the same manner. It’s just the reality of the situation.
Our intention is not to ignore or disregard the suffering of humans, who are also animals, but to consider that the way non-humans and humans are exploited are linked in a very real way. We understand reality. We understand it in the context of many types of oppression, including sexism and homophobia and classism and, yes, speciesism.
Our goal isn’t for humans and non-humans to be treated equally. We are all different beings with different needs, but what we all have in common is an interest in not suffering and a will (and right) to live. I don’t believe that we’re going to achieve this in our lifetimes, but it’s still worth fighting for. Racism is not going to end in our lifetimes, nor is sexism, but these too are causes worth fighting for.
In my mind, doing my best to avoid supporting the suffering of sentient beings - human or not - through what I choose to consume - is the least I can do.
hey yonas. i agree with what asma says. and i’ve believed since i first started going vegan that how we treat animals is a reflection of how we treat other humans (albeit animals get the more gruesome and evil treatment in a legal framework across much of the world).
non-human rights and human rights do boil down to exploitation, as asma already mentioned. you can’t fight for one and not fight for the other. just think: the second you start to make some excuse, like “oh, we can continue to treat X like shit, only because Y and Z are more immediate and important”, what logical case can anyone make against not treating some new entities A and B worse (or ‘demote’ Y and Z in favor of A and B)? the reasoning is purely subjective and in the context of the person making the argument. it’s essentially selfish.
if we constantly have the mentality that it’s ok to treat some other ‘thing’ - whether it be another ethnicity, gender, species, religion - secondary to some greater cause, then we’re never going to get off the ground on respecting the right to life that all sentient beings have.
why was it right in the first place to keep travis? he wasn’t a rescue. he was bred to serve for human entertainment. he had no choice in his life (well, he could’ve chose not to play along and then we would’ve killed/dumped him as a baby), nor did he receive wages. he couldn’t chose to go to what he felt like home was, he was given to someone to keep an eye out on him. by all accounts that’s the baseline for slavery. and though intelligence shouldn’t factor in how we treat animals (since they’re naturally fully sufficient in their own right), just think of putting a 6-year-old child in a position where they had no choice but to work for the rest of their life.
it is a misconception that vegans only care about non-humans (most likely because of PETA). if you have time, you might want to try listening to the compassionate cooks podcast (’vegetarian food for thought’). colleen made a point about this in an episode that you’re far more likely to find animal rights activists fighting alongside all forms of human rights and environmental rights than the other way around.
once you start piecing together all the different connections, veganism turns out to be the most encompassing cause, since it directly relates to environmental and human rights as a whole.
i just can’t help but be enraged when non-humans are looked at purely as some object. even when i wasn’t vegan that was an issue to me. it’s pretty obvious when you spend time with animals that they’re not doing random stupid things. they interact and play and learn. mishti is extremely creative as far as chinchillas go. it’s not a fluke.
people should be respectful and truthful enough to acknowledge them as beings in their own right. and not be freaked out that anything with a brain is capable of having surprisingly complex thought.
i agree with the comments regarding how we as humans treat animals. however, i will never go vegan. in fact, i’d eat other people if i could.
I want a Lenin-skin bag. Marc Jacobs will design it and encrust it with diamonds and everyone will envy me.