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Human & Animal Rights Presented by Toni Brockhoven Secretary General : DCP Liaison & Marketing : Beauty Without Cruelty Campaign Manager : No Foie Gras SA Beauty without Cruelty Real People Real Issues Real Change Human & Animal Rights Vivisection Entertainment Factory Farming Cosmetic Testing Exploitation of wildlife Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights The oppression both of humans and of other species of animals is inextricably tangled within the structure of social arrangements. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights If we are superior to other animals -- if our nature is of a different kind than other animals -- then why should we grant rights to species who can not talk, or compose symphonies, or induce mathematical equations, or build satellites which send back television pictures of other planets? Why shouldn't we humans simply regard lower animals as things which may become our property? We may be kind to animals if it is pleasing to us to do so, but we should not grant animals an equal stature that nature has not given them. Respect for nature requires a respect for the nature of what things are ... and we are better, stronger, smarter, than the animals we hunt, ranch, farm, fish, trap, butcher, skin, bone, and eat. (J. Neil Schulman) Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights Animal rights is the philosophy of allowing non-human animals to have the most basic rights that all sentient beings desire: the freedom to live a natural life free from human exploitation, unnecessary pain and suffering, and premature death. This is what the animal rights movement is about; it is not about working for equality between human and non-human animals. Which is what people like Schulman would have you believe. He and others work on the ‘dog or your baby’ principle. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights 28 March 1912 “The way in which certain types of women, easily recognised, have acted in the last year or two, especially in the last few weeks, lends a great deal of colour to the argument that the mental equilibrium of the female sex is not as stable as the mental equilibrium of the male sex.” ‘Militantism and hysteria are inherent and inseparable from the Suffrage movement.’ ‘By giving votes to women you are destroying the value of a General Election.’ Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights ANIMAL WELFARE Vs ANIMAL RIGHTS Proponents of animal welfare seek to alleviate the suffering of animals while they are being exploited -- without attempting to question the fundamental basis of whether it is acceptable to exploit animals in the first place. Animal rights beliefs reject the idea that animals need to have a value to the human species in order to be deserving of rights. A person can work for both animal welfare and animal rights. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights How is Animal Rights Related to Human Rights? Since the beginning of recorded history, humans have tried to maintain their dominance over others. As humanity began to grow intellectually and socially, it became apparent that many sentient beings were being discriminated against -- that is, having rights taken away from them -because of the class to which they belonged. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights An amazing aspect of prejudice is that most of us cannot relate to it until it affects us on a personal level -- which in many cases is too late to stop the perpetrators from continuing. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up. Reverend Martin Niemöller And who will speak up for the animals? If not you, who? If not now, when? Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights It is a mistake to see issues of human and animal exploitation as mutually exclusive. On the contrary, all exploitation is inextricably intertwined. All exploitation is a manifestation of violence. All discrimination is a manifestation of violence. As long as we tolerate violence of any sort, there will be violence of every sort. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights And it goes the other way as well: as long as we tolerate racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination, there will be speciesism. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights The idea of awarding rights to animals has the support of legal scholars such as Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School. Animal law is taught in 110 out of 180 law schools in the United States, in six law schools in Canada, and is routinely covered in universities in philosophy or applied ethics courses. In June 2008, Spain became the first country to introduce animal rights, when a cross-party parliamentary committee recommended that rights be extended to the great apes, in accordance with Peter Singer's Great Ape Project. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights First known laws protecting animals The first known legislation against animal cruelty in the Englishspeaking world was passed in Ireland in 1635. It prohibited pulling wool off sheep, and the attaching of ploughs to horses' tails, referring to "the cruelty used to beasts," which is probably the earliest reference to this concept in the English language. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights Women have been at the forefront of animal activism in the U.S. and Great Britain since the 1800s. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights Lansbury’s (1985) historical look at Great Britain’s early animal protests and organizing found that middle-class women and the working-class made curious allies in the cause of antivivisection. Both groups were routinely subjected to humiliating and sometimes dangerous procedures. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights Women activists identified links to the status of women and animals in society in the 5 following ways: •experiences of physical and sexual violence, •lack of voice or political power in society, •being neglected or ignored, •being controlled •and being viewed as objects or property. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights Bigger brains, sharper senses, and longer lives are three of the many reasons why women should lead the family and the world. Female Empowerment and Matriarchy are words that are seldom spoken in religion or politics. Empowerment is about confidence in one’s abilities. The knowledge that one is entitled and worthy of rights. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights It was not until the introduction of the Bill of Rights that all women in this country received formal recognition as equal citizens. South African women -under the social and even legal control of their fathers or husbands - were second-class citizens for many years. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights Nowadays women, and black women in particular, are still economically disadvantaged and we often earn less than men for the same tasks. South African women also have to contend with extremely high rates of rape and domestic violence. Women are obviously protected by the full range of rights guaranteed in the new Constitution - the rights to life, dignity, privacy and others. The prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of gender, sex, pregnancy and marital status is clearly intended to protect women. What the law states however, and what happens in practice are two very different things and we have seen cultural habits are still very much evidence. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights Animals have no rights under South African law at present. The Animal Protection Act does not protect animals from terrible suffering and abuse by vivisectors. If anything, it serves to cloak the realities of state sanctified cruelty and abuse We use animals for entertainment in the form of gambling and circuses, use them dressed in human clothing in advertising and for canned hunting. We perform terrible medical and cosmetic procedures that have NO HUMAN BENEFIT as recognised by many animal researchers themselves. We have zoos and puppy mills and millions of unwanted and abused domestic animals. Serial abuse is perpetrated every single day to millions of food animals, who suffer the most terrible lives and deaths. We have ritual slaughter and the slaughter of our wildlife for table decorations and jewellery and clothing. We need every voice to be clearly heard in defence of our fellow earthlings, who suffer through our complicit silence! Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Human & Animal Rights Working towards a better life for humans and animals are not mutually exclusive, as we have seen. Indeed, fighting for the rights of all those who are oppressed will ultimately benefit us all. Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights Thank you Real People Real Issues Real Change Beauty without Cruelty Defending Animal Rights