What Not To Say In Las Vegas

September 29, 2008 | 2 Comments

GOP communications director in Clark County, Nevada said:

“We don’t want [Hispanics] to become the new African-American community,” Lima told The Associated Press. “And that’s what the Democratic Party is going to do to them, create more programs and give them handouts, food stamps and checks for this and checks for that. We don’t want that.”

“I’m very much afraid that the Democratic Party is going to do the same thing that they did with the African-American culture and make them all dependent on the government and we don’t want that,” she said.

source: USA Today

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Miscellaneous
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‘Regulation’ is not a dirty word. Capitalism is not democracy.

September 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment

My mom’s right. We think similarly.

If you vote in the polls or vote with your dollars, start voting for something more serious: government regulation.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Politics
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Does This Make You Hungry?

September 28, 2008 | 2 Comments

Well, then, it’s settled. You’re not a carnivore.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Miscellaneous
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Anti-Animal Bloggers

September 27, 2008 | 1 Comment

Listen up, I write about feminism whenever I feel like it. I don’t wait until NOW does something I don’t like in order to bring up pro-women discussion on my blog. In fact, if I were to ONLY discuss feminism in the context of “I hate what NOW is doing”, I would merely bolster the anti-feminists (rather than carefully critique the mainstream feminists). I’d be an anti-feminist.

You can do the same. You can choose to blog about animal rights whenever you choose. You don’t have to wait for PETA to do something you dislike. The fact that you ONLY choose to blog about animal rights when PETA does something you dislike makes YOU anti-animal.

Get honest with yourself and your readers.

—

You want to get me to hate on PETA along with you by accusing that I “encourage isms, and reduce people to the status of ‘other,’” well it won’t work. I have already criticized PETA. And I’ve already put my thoughts on the matter of controversial animal advocacy in black and white, numerous times. Samplings:

Does the End Justify the Means?

PETA is well known for outrageous stunts that attract grand media attention. Their success is due to their ability to generate publicity. Publicity is what it’s all about: information distribution. The more people who hear, read, and see the torturous nature of factory farming, fur farming, and vivisection the more they’ll demand compassion.

In the US, sexualization helps promote anything. Naked protesters always get news coverage. We’re a bunch of prudes, us Americans, and we can’t help but be fascinated by nudity. Good marketing demands some use of sexualization.

The problem, however, comes when the message is distorted. PETA’s Fur is Dead: “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaign makes sense. The message isn’t lost. But when it comes to milk or KFC sexualization is just an attention grabber. And as an attention grabber, it grabs more attention in the wrong direction.

Larson complains about PETA’s pornographic ads in her article, saying they’re sexploitative and oppressive. She argues that the ads send a dangerous message that shifts men’s power over animals to power over women.

The ads, however, can be viewed as criticism of both animal and women’s objectification, a sort of tongue-in-cheek critique, a post-post-mod understanding or consciousness. I embrace this viewpoint; that’s how I’ve accepted these PETA ads in the past. They’re killing two (clay) birds with one stone. But that view requires an educated, enlightened, and sympathetic audience, not the actual audience. [...]

Ultimately, we must be more careful with our messages. Even when social standards contradict, messages of liberation, whomever they’re for, ought not to confuse. (source)

and

In some small way these ads blur the Madonna/whore dichotomy. These aren’t ads for Playboy or Hustler, these are ads for charity, activism, morality. To use sexuality to promote morality is an interesting twist that has the potential to spread more than just the idea that circuses are immoral. It has the potential to spread the idea that women’s bodies are their own and they’ll use them how they please.

The main argument for these types of ads is: Naked bodies get noticed. Sex is probably the easiest way to market something. Stick a pretty female face on almost any product and it sells better. Show a nude body and get attention.

But again, there’s one of the standard feminists criticisms of porn and the pornification of mainstream media: the images represented are not varied enough. One of the reasons we recognize it as porn is that the story it tells is always the same one. It’s not a liberation of female sexuality if it doesn’t truly represent female sexuality. A proper representation of female sexuality would be much more varied, less traditionally pretty, less staged, less seemingly exploitative. [...]

The rich, old, powerful, white guy who only just realized the systematic oppression of women after watching his daughter harassed at high school isn’t going to automatically apply that lesson to other groups of oppressed people and certainly not to animals. He’s more likely to see racy PeTA ads and think they’re exploitative of women than think “wow, there’s a connection between feminism and animal rights.” He just won’t get the animal rights message at all. For him, the ad only serves to promote mainstream anti-women ideas.

and

PETA’s fat shaming is unacceptable. The campaign should not be “Fight The Fat” and instead should be “Prevent Disease.” While there is a causal link between meat-eating and obesity for many people, there are plenty of fat vegetarians and vegans.[...]
Statements like “fight the fat” are direct attacks on all fat people: meat-eaters AND vegans alike. It’s as though PETA’s campaign thinks “playground mockery” is acceptable when it’s done against fat kids. Well, it’s not. Bullying is wrong. Fat shaming is not OK.
[...]PETA’s ad campaign could very easily be interpreted, particularly to children reading the billboards, to mean ‘fight the fat kids’ and ‘bully the burger-eater.’ PETA should be a bit more careful.(source)

and

“some people argue that there is such a thing as bad publicity. They think vegan education should be as free of any negativity as possible, including associations with sex, violence, or insanity because of the negative social stigma and public controversy.
“But you know what? This is the real world. And the real world includes a few nutjobs. Personally, I don’t really mind them on my team. They’re welcome here. They make things interesting :) (source)

and

“There’s a point where reproducing sexist ads for the purpose of sharing, teaching, and analyzing them for feminist theory simply becomes marketing the ads themselves. For example, I guarantee more Feministing readers clicked the link and learned something from PETA than wrote PETA a letter asking them to use fewer nude or nearly nude campaigns. In fact, I bet if you did a poll of Feministing readers you’d find out that a large portion of them are sexist and/or misogynist men who simply use the site to help find materials they can get off on. They don’t read the analysis, they just look at the pictures.” (source)

and

She put quotes around the word demonstration because she doesn’t think it is truly a demonstration. She thinks it’s a sexist stunt and only a sexist stunt, nothing more. She trivializes the activists by refusing to acknowledge their political speech as speech. She thinks animal rights is just a joke, not something we should seriously consider, so when women get inside cages to protest battery hen cages for egg production, Vanessa won’t call that political activism. [...]

No wonder all she can see is sexism. She truly can’t see the actual message at all. She’s so blinded by her own judgments that she can’t form a serious analysis. Feministing criticism of PETA is too shallow. It winds up silencing women’s voices and ignoring their political and social activism.

Ironically, this shallowness is the best reason that PETA should re-evaluate this type of activism. The sad fact is that most people are too shallow. They don’t ‘get it.’ (source)

and

Liken a woman to a living pig and it’s sexist and evil. But liken a woman to a dead pig and it’s funny and artistic.
Fucking hypocrites. When it comes to ‘women as meat’ analogies PETA is pretty tame.

and

This is not porn; this is political expression. If you are turned on (or turned off) that’s your issue, not hers. She is not intending to arouse and pleasure; she is intending to educate and inspire.
[...] Exactly what kind of feminism thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to use their bodies in legal ways for political and moral expression? What kind of feminism calls active, political women exploited and oppressed and then refuses to listen to them? What kind of feminism says a woman’s political expression is dehumanizing?
Not my kind of feminism.(source)

and… then there was that time when the NY Times interviewed me. Did I say, “Bravo, PETA!” or “I love vegan strip clubs!” NO. I said:

“I think it’s really important that when reviewing and analyzing images of women, we take into account their perspective of what they’re trying to say,”

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Animals, Feminism, vegan, veganism
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PETA’s letter to Ben and Jerry

September 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I’ve accentuated the important parts of the letter here:

September 23, 2008

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders
Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc.

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I’d like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry’s. Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry’s replaced the cow’s milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers–and cows–would reap the benefits.

Using cow’s milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer’s health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America’s leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow’s milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease–America’s number one cause of death.

Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk.

Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.

And of course, the veal industry could not survive without the dairy industry. Because male calves can’t produce milk, dairy farmers take them from their mothers immediately after birth and sell them to veal farms, where they endure 14 to17 weeks of torment chained inside a crate so small that they can’t even turn around.

The breast is best! Won’t you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow’s milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream? Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President
PETA

And thus you see, the human breastmilk was just a hook. They weren’t being serious. No one was honestly suggesting that B&J’s should hook women up to pumps and use their milk to make ice cream. Get real.

Oh, and PETA wasn’t hurting any women by discussing breastmilk’s nutritional value to human babies. Hello? Remember all those babies in China who DIED because they got cow’s milk instead of breastmilk?

Everyone who missed the point of PETA’s letter and who accused PETA of being sexist for discussing human breastmilk was being intellectually dishonest, anti-animal, and anti-PETA.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Feminism, Sexuality, animal-rights, veganism
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