Share thisHow animal rights activists use language to cause social change
The modern animal rights movement seeks to eliminate all use of animals for human benefit. Today’s animal rights activists evolved from a long line of humans in industrialised western countries who have organised to protect animals and promote their welfare since the founding of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824. To realise such a radically altered worldview, advocates of animal rights use language and law as strategies to foment a social revolution. In the courts and in the classroom, on the fringe and in the mainstream, they are battling to reshape attitudes and redefine the relationship between different kinds of living beings. To free animals from human exploitation or “speciesism”, activists must liberate language and ultimately change the status of animals as property under the law.
EVOLVING FROM WELFARE TO RIGHTS
According to author Rita Mae Brown, “language is the roadmap of a culture. It tells you where its people came from and where they are going”. Changes in language are important markers that indicate shifts in public opinion, and it is significant that the term “animal rights” is increasingly used in common parlance as synonymous with “animal welfare”.
From an animal welfare perspective, it is acceptable to use animals for human benefit so long as the animals are treated humanely and every effort is made to minimise unnecessary pain and suffering. From an animal rights perspective, it is wrong to use animals to benefit humans. They cannot even be used to benefit other animals. They contend that, as sentient beings, nonhuman animals have interests of their own that should to be represented in the courts and protected under the law just like humans. Welfarists work to improve the treatment and conditions of animals and take responsibility for the animals in their care. Animal rights advocates fight to abolish animal use, which they consider exploitation, cruelty, abuse, enslavement, and torture.
Speaking to an international audience at the 2008 ILAR conference entitled “Animal Research in a Global Environment: Meeting the Challenges”, Dr Bernard Rollin, a professor of philosophy, animal sciences, and biomedical sciences at Colorado State University, pointed out that the distinction between animal welfare and animal rights has blurred. Most people who describe themselves as animal lovers say they support animal rights, but they don’t think that means they are advocating for a radical agenda or espousing an extreme position. In general, people who care about animals don’t want them to suffer. They want to stop animal cruelty and abuse and support organisations they believe help animals. Responsive to stories of animal suffering, they support and spend money to pass laws that expands traditional protections of nonhuman animals.
Consider the many ways that emotionally-charged words such as “abuse”, “cruelty”, and “torture” are used to describe practices involving animals, especially research and testing. Such language can be found in the materials of every kind of animal-related organisation across the spectrum from traditional protection groups to those that claim to be concerned with animal welfare and stop short of identifying with an extreme animal rights agenda.