Recommended Reading

July 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment

My mom has “made major happiness leap.” (link)
Naked cyclists! (link)
Slate takes on horse racing. (link)
Mary Martin has a post up about keeping animals as pets/ caring for rescue animals. It’s a great piece about bondage with some feminist undertones. (link)
Mary’s piece was inspired by an article by Lee Hall. Here is a snippet:

“Not only are water and seeds and trees and beaches for sale, but conscious beings too are classified as property, available to be owned by persons. Persons may be those ubiquitous apes known as human beings, or, in certain circumstances, persons might be the businesses concocted by these same ubiquitous apes.” [...]
“while animal-rights theory would support efforts to secure legal rights where they might be obtainable, most of its advocates, quite sensibly, are currently cultivating root-level changes in humanity’s understanding, in order to bring about a culture that respects, and thus deliberately declines to violate, conscious beings.”(link)
Common Ground pro-vegan article:

“After I became a vegan, a suite of changes came over me: I became lighter, finding a new stable weight, I felt better, my bodily systems worked more smoothly, and this: Simply because I had stopped being complicit in their slaughter, I came to see animals in a different way. I no longer had a need to rationalize at every meal, and I gradually came to see the essential truths of the ethical arguments for veganism: of course animals feel pain. How could they not? Of course they want to live, and to enjoy life. Anyone who’s lived with a pet knows as much. But there’s a difference between knowing and feeling, and no longer having to defend my psyche against my actions meant that I came to feel the reality of the animal experience.” (link)