Moving Beyond 'Yes on Prop 2'

Regarding "Yes on Prop. 2," the goals and agenda being promoted are both limited and disastrous. (To avoid any confusion from the outset, I should note that it's not that I think people should have voted against Prop 2, but that I think Prop 2 and similar campaigns sets a limited and counterproductive agenda for nonhuman animal advocacy.)

California's Proposition 2, titled the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, frames an agenda around the assumption that so-called "farm animals" (specifically three subgroups of pigs, calves, and hens) are inherently exploitable. Solely concerned with the "prevention of cruelty," this framework not only takes eliminating the exploitation of other animals off the agenda, it intentionally blocks abolition from coming anywhere near the agenda.

This "anti-cruelty" approach is extremely successful at one thing: making us forget and preventing us from understanding how all forms of exploitation are wrong and oppressive. That is, as Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana write on the epistemology of ignorance, through this agenda "a lack of knowledge or an unlearning of something previously known ... is actively produced for the purpose of domination and exploitation."

Discourse framed around preventing cruelty works to depoliticize the oppression of other animals. While set around "reducing suffering," the agenda intentionally avoids addressing the oppressive power relations under which suffering occurs. So-called "farm animal reform" campaigns like Prop 2 in fact collaborate with oppression by taking the existence of human supremacy over other animals as a given. Under the anti-cruelty framework, the domination of nonhuman animals is deemed appropriate; efforts are directed to minimizing suffering while maintaining the privileges that hold the system of human supremacy firmly in place. At the same time, this agenda works to marginalize those who seek instead to abolish that same system of oppression.

Thus we find nonhuman animal advocates framed as either reducing the suffering of other animals by supporting new methods for exploitation or as lacking any compassion for other animals suffering for refusing to support the alternative means of exploitation. Along these lines, we're told that initiatives like Prop 2 will reduce the suffering of currently existing nonhuman animals, regardless of the fact that Prop 2 will not even go into effect until the year 2015. The narrow framework attempts to force us to "choose" between two forms of exploitation; there is no room for alternative frameworks that seek to eliminate exploitation. Stated differently, with alternative approaches effectively marginalized, the discussion becomes about pigs, calves, and hens having room to stretch and turn around, with no room allowed for questioning the oppression inherent in humans' exploitation of other animals.

So while Prop 2 and similar campaigns focusing on the space that confines other animals, they provide no space for those who dissent to the confinement and exploitation of other animals as a whole. In effect, the goals of these campaigns do more to obscure the oppression of other animals than anything else. That is, the focus on so-called "cruelty of confinement" in effect confines our understanding of the exploitation of other animals. The message these campaigns communicate is that other animals merely need a little more space, and once they have that we can go on exploiting them. Deeper issues go unnoticed. For instance, how many people realize that the exploitation of other animals' reproduction is central to all three groups of nonhuman animals covered by Prop 2?

Take a moment and consider the exploitation of other animals' reproduction. That is, consider more fully the lives of the pigs, calves, and hens covered in Prop 2. The pigs are specifically sows during pregnancy, birthing, and nursing in the process of breeding more pigs for the "pork" industry. The calves are specifically male calves whose mothers are impregnated in order to stimulate lactation for the "dairy" industry. Useless to the "dairy" industry, these male calves are sent to the "veal" industry. And the hens are specifically hens exploited to produce eggs for the egg industry. So why is the "cruelty of confinement" seen as the key issue, when the more fundamental issue of human dominance over another animals' body and lives is ignored?

By framing the agenda in terms of anti-cruelty, there is no value given to other animals controlling their own bodies and lives. Instead, the ability of a pig to stretch her legs, a calf to lay his body down, or a hen to stretch her wings is all that we're even allowed to consider. Of course, the bodies of these animals will nonetheless still be subjected to full, direct human control even after Prop 2 goes into effect in the far-off year of 2015.

Rather than challenging speciesism and human supremacy, campaigns like Prop. 2 funnel millions of dollars into collaborating with the oppressive system that exploits other animals. These campaigns operate on an agenda that assumes other animals exist for humans use. That other animals don't have control over their own bodies and lives goes to the heart of their very exploitation, and that is why it is ignored in favor of a few inches of space. We can give them space and still exploit them, but we could not continue to exploit them if we gave up our control over their bodies and lives.

If we're serious about eliminating the oppression of other animals, then we need an explicitly anti-speciesist approach that directly challenges the structure of human supremacy and the privileges that structure is based on. In this respect, I think it helps to recall that such a movement already exists. Of course I'm talking about the vegan movement, which is founded on principles of opposing, and developing alternatives to, exploitation (particularly where humans exploit other animals).