“We need to stop talking about "factory farming." The problem is violence against animals. People will continue eating industrialized meat as long as they believe the myth that there is a "humane" alternative: "humane killing" discourse serves to legitimate the whole meat system.” EthicsAnimal RightsAnimal WelfareFactory FarmingSpeciesismAnimal AgricultureCritical TheoryBad FaithHuman SupremacyCritical Animal Studies Author:John Sanbonmatsu
“The utilitarian-inflected discourse on animal "suffering" is the wrong point of emphasis. We need to talk instead about the fundamental causes of that suffering: human domination, exploitation, and mass killing of nonhuman animals. The problem isn't "suffering"; it's us.” EthicsAnimal RightsAnimalsAnimal WelfareFactory FarmingSpeciesismAnimal AgricultureBad FaithHuman SupremacyCritical Animal Studies Author:John Sanbonmatsu
“Every significant philosopher of the last 2500 years has claimed that only humans are free, only humans have an ontological capacity for freedom. That is a lie. The condition for the possibility of freedom is merely the condition for the possibility of unfreedom.” EthicsAnimal RightsAnimalsAnimal WelfareFactory FarmingSpeciesismAnimal AgricultureBad FaithHuman SupremacyCritical Animal Studies Author:John Sanbonmatsu
“The reason that we treat other animals as our slaves and as commodities isn't because they have this ontologically-rooted inferiority, it's that we see them as inferiors 'because' we find it useful to exploit them, and to harm them.” EthicsAnimal RightsAnimalsAnimal WelfareFactory FarmingSpeciesismAnimal AgricultureBad FaithHuman SupremacyCritical Animal Studies Author:John Sanbonmatsu
“Let's all agree to stop using words like "pups," "kits," "chicks," "calves," etc., when referring to the young of other species. They are children. To use any other term is to reinforce the ideology of "otherness" that allows us to go on killing nonhuman animals with impunity.” EthicsAnimal RightsAnimalsAnimal WelfareFactory FarmingSpeciesismAnimal AgricultureBad FaithHuman SupremacyCritical Animal Studies Author:John Sanbonmatsu
“All human culture is narcissistic: being based in the violent negation and exclusion of all other forms of animal life, it collapses into toxic self-love. It thus inevitably destroys its own object, too, i.e. itself, because genuine love requires an Other.” EthicsAnimal RightsAnimalsAnimal WelfareFactory FarmingSpeciesismAnimal AgricultureBad FaithHuman SupremacyCritical Animal Studies Author:John Sanbonmatsu
“What does it mean to be human, when we've organized our whole identity, our whole economy, around harming our fellow creatures?” EthicsAnimal RightsAnimalsAnimal WelfareFactory FarmingSpeciesismAnimal AgricultureBad FaithHuman SupremacyCritical Animal Studies Author:John Sanbonmatsu