How we treat animals = how we treat people?

dearkitty.blogsome.com

One of the most contested aspects of the animal rights debate is about whether or not animals have the capacity to feel compassion on the same level as people, and in that regard how that should affect how we treat them. As I have said in different posts, I believe this topic of discourse to be irrelevant to the my main point, that we as the dominant species of this planet have the right to eat, wear, and do whatever we need to with animals.

And most people in our class and most people in general will agree with that sentiment. But what most people cannot bring themselves to accept is the enormous capacity for pain we as this dominant race are willing to inflict on animals in general. They do not deplore the steak on their plate, but they deplore the massive factory farms that lead to its creation. This is where the debate on whether or not animals have some of the same capacity for empathy and compassion as we do comes into place.

One of the many tactics used by animal rights advocates is to show the human being's capacity for evil, even towards his own species. The famous Stanford prison experiment of 1971 showed how normal, everyday undergraduates could be transformed into guards that "exhibited genuine sadistic tendencies (Sadism website)." The human capacity for evil is great indeed, and very frightening, but what exactly does this have to do with animals?

Many people would claim that by treating animals as horribly as we currently do will somehow translate to how we treat our fellow humans. They point to the Holocaust and slavery as examples of how, if we treat other humans as animals, our capacity for evil is greatly enhanced.

"How can animals look you in the face (Course Anthology 397)?," Derrida asks. Simply, it cannot. The slave-owners were wrong and Nazis were wrong because they were hurting members of their OWN species, as much as they refused to believe that. A pig is not a human, which is why such comparisons have the tendency to offend people. The belief that mistreating an animal can somehow lead to mistreating people holds little weight in that regard.

fourthbranchofamerica.com

A similarly misleading belief is represented in Dunayer's article where she argues that by insulting woman by calling them specific animals, we are devaluing both animals and woman. I disagree. We are simply ONLY devaluing women. "Cow verbally abuses women by identifying them with the abused cow (Course Anthology 390)" argues Dunayer. Exactly. A cow is not as intelligent, does not have the same moral capacity, does not have the same propensity to think in abstract manners, which is why this insult is so gross and debasing. But to argue that this somehow stems from a cruel lack of empathy is rather ill-founded in my opinion. Animals to animals on a societal basis does not lead to massive cruelty to fellow humans, and and this argument has little weight.