PETA: People for the Unethical Treatment of Humans

I owe the title of this post to Diana, who came up with it last night in response to my twitter rant against PETA’s latest advertising campaign. In this campaign, a woman who is quite evidently physically beaten is shown the day after her ‘attack’ by her boyfriend, whose new-found sexual energy has come from becoming a Vegan. So the message is: ‘ladies, convert your boyfriend to Veganism and you too can get attacked with violent sex!’ Or perhaps the message was directed at the ‘lads’: ‘hey guys, look what Veganism can make you do, isn’t it cool to beat the crap out of your girlfriend and prove your manhood through sexual violence?’ Either way you look at it, it’s making light of the physical abuse suffered by many women around the world.

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But we have seen this is a shock-tactic used by PETA over and over again. They recently exploited the history of slavery in America, they routinely objectify women’s bodies in their ad campaigns (just google them and you’ll see how much of this goes on), and they feed a cultural logic of blatant misogyny where women’s bodies are there for a spectator’s gaze, or to be abused, dehumanised and overly-sexualised to the point where ‘woman=porn object’. As Mimi Seldner points out in her article for Ms. Blog, ‘That’s the bind PETA (People for the Exploitation of Tits and Ass?) keeps putting feminists in, as well as other women and women-loving people. Does “it’s for a good cause” excuse exploiting, dehumanizing and sexualizing women?’ No, it doesn’t.

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So in case it isn’t clear, here’s a message to PETA: One day, I hope you will graduate into the state of adulthood where respect for victims of various injustices goes hand-in-hand with respect for animals. In the meantime, if you continue to create this crap, we will continue to call you out on it. Because perpetuating sexism, misogyny and racism, or making light of victims of historical genocide or abuse, is not a particularly clever technique to further your cause. You do not help animal victims by harming human ones. You do not bring positive change about by creating new victims. Until you start treating humans ethically, I want nothing to do with you as both a human being and an animal lover. Go sell your racist, sexist and cruel crap elsewhere.

-Read the whole article here.