Quotessence
Home / Books / Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices

Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices

Book by Lisa Kemmerer · 14 quotes · Veganism, Animal Liberation, Speciesism

Filter quotes by topic

AllVeganismAnimal LiberationSpeciesismFactory FarmingIntersectionalityActivismSocial JusticeFarmed AnimalsDairyExploitationOppressionPatriarchyCowsEggsPowerActivistsAnimal StudiesBoycottFarm AnimalsOrganic Food

Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices Quotes

“There is no requirement that the cows, pigs, or hens who were exploited to create “natural” products be treated any different from how other factory farmed animals are treated. Farmed animals who are exploited for “natural” products are not allowed to live in natural conditions—they are not even allowed to satisfy their most basic natural behaviors. Despite consumer assumptions about what “natural” means, . . . the USDA’s “natural” food labels only regulate “the presence of artificial additives and the degree of processing.” “Free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” labels are just as meaningless for farmed animals as are “all natural” labels. Just like farmed animals enslaved by organic industries, farmed animals exploited by “free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” producers are routinely debeaked, disbudded, detoed, castrated, their tails are docked, and/or they are branded (depending on the species). Neither do “free range” and “certified humane” labels protect cows from perpetual impregnation, pregnancy, birth, calfsnatching, transport, or dismemberment (slaughter) at a very young age. Finally, “free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” labels fail to help “spent” hens, who are sent to slaughter at the same youthful age.”

FoodLabelsVeganismFactory FarmingNatural HealthOrganic FoodFree RangeCage FreeHumane Labels
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“Organic” labels do nothing for a cow who is perpetually impregnated and milked, who loses her calf to the veal industry—or to protect her calf, who is sold at birth to the veal industry to be slaughtered. “Organic” products are designed to optimize human health and reduce environmental degradation. Those who invest in organic products are not making a choice that promotes the well-being of farmed animals.”

HealthVeganCowsVeganismDietOrganicCowVealDairy Industry
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“The kill can be likened to male orgasm. Sex is traditionally thought to be over when the man has an orgasm, and the hunt is never so decisively over as it is after a successful kill. As a teacher, I impatiently listened to a young man matter-of-factly defend the importance of hunting because he found the experience “orgasmic.” From his point of view, all that mattered was how exciting and wonderful the experience was for him.”

SexHuntingHuntersVeganismDeerAnimal LiberationOrgasmHuntSpeciesismOrgasmic
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“Animals who are exploited for “organic” foods are raised, maintained, transported, and slaughtered just like their nonorganic” counterparts: They are debeaked, dehorned, detoed, castrated, and/or branded, and they are kept, transported, and slaughtered in the same deplorable conditions.”

AnimalsExploitationVeganismAnimal EthicsOrganic FoodOrganic FarmingFarm AnimalsOrganic Food Benefits
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“For the sake of farmed animals, who suffer terribly in their artificially short lives, please do not reject red flesh in preference for poultry flesh. Please do not replace flesh with eggs or dairy products. Please do not buy animal products that try to disguise cruel exploitation behind meaningless feel-good labels such as “free range,” “cruelty free,” “organic,” and “natural.” For the sake of your own health, and for the sake of farmed animals, please eliminate (or at least reduce) your consumption of all animal products.”

NaturalEggsExploitationVeganismDairyFactory FarmingOrganic FoodOrganicFree RangeCruelty Free
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“There is no other industry as cruel and oppressive as factory farming. With regard to numbers affected, extent and length of suffering, and numbers of premature deaths, no other industry can even approach factory farming. Billions of individuals are exploited from genetically engineered birth, through excruciating confinement, to conveyor belt dismemberment. Consequently, there is no industry more appropriate for social justice activists to boycott.”

Social JusticeOppressionVeganismAnimal CrueltyAnimal LiberationBoycottFactory FarmingAnimal StudiesFarm AnimalsEthics And Diet
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“For most women (as for most men) links between sexism and speciesism are not readily apparent. We have been conditioned not to see exploitation. For example, men generally have no idea how patriarchy affects women—unless they go out of their way to learn. The same is true for women with regard to cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys. Both women and nonhuman animals have traditionally been viewed as property—"things” to be owned and controlled by those in power. While the plight of women is linked with that of nonhuman animals through a single system of oppression, through their comparative powerlessness and invisibility, and through sexual exploitation, it is important to elucidate these similarities through concrete examples. Links between women and nonhuman animals are nowhere more apparent than through the vulnerabilities of mothers and their young, and the control of pregnancies and offspring; this particular form of oppression is nowhere more blatant than on factory farms.”

MotherhoodExploitationVeganismPowerlessnessInvisibilityIntersectionalitySpeciesismSexual ExploitationFactory Farms
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“Feminists lobby against sex wage discrepancies, gays fight homophobic laws, and the physically challenged demand greater access—each fighting for injustices that affect their lives, and/or the lives of their loved ones. Yet these dedicated activists usually fail to make even a slight change in their consumer choices for the sake of other much more egregiously oppressed and exploited individuals. While it is important to fight for one’s own liberation, it is counterproductive (not to mention selfish and small minded) to fight for one’s own liberation while willfully continuing to oppress others who are yet lower on the rungs of hierarchy.”

InjusticeConsumersWagesVeganismDisabledAnimal LiberationIntersectionalityActivistsFeministsGays And Lesbians
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“While it is one thing to strive for a cause that fundamentally and primarily benefits you—your freedom and equality (or the freedom and equality of those you know and care about), or for your environment (on which you depend for survival)—it is quite another matter to struggle on behalf of a cause that does not benefit you directly.”

ActivismVeganismAnimal LiberationSpeciesismActivistsHuman Animal RelationshipsAnimal StudiesEthics And AnimalsSocial Justice Causes
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“With regard to farmed animals, we are the ones who are in power. We are the ones who have the power to change our consumer habits. We are the ones who either put our money down for their lives, or boycott animal products.”

PowerSocial JusticeActivismVeganismAnimal LiberationBoycottFactory FarmingSpeciesismAnimal StudiesFarmed Animals
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“Oppressions are linked. We cannot free human beings without freeing cows, sows, and hens along with women and men who are systematically oppressed by those in power. Rather than seek to fight our way up the patriarchal ladder, those working for social justice need to dismantle hierarchies, and cease to exploit all those who are less powerful—even if we must give up a few culinary favorites in the process . . . . Each of us decides, over the course of our daily lives, whether we will ignore the suffering of nonhuman animals . . . . We choose where our money goes, and in the process, we choose whether to boycott cruelty and support change, or melt ambiguously back into the masses.”

PowerSocial JusticeActivismOppressionVeganismAnimal LiberationIntersectionalityBoycottActivistsFarmed Animals
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image

“While it is one thing to strive for a cause that fundamentally and primarily benefits you—your freedom and equality (or the freedom and equality of those you know and care about), or for your environment (on which you depend for survival)—it is quite another matter to struggle on behalf of a cause that does not benefit you directly. As social justice activists, we must remember how ardently we wish that those in power would help bring change. The oppressed wish that those in power could empathize enough to understand the wrongness of what is happening, and how much they would need and appreciate the active participation of those in power to bring about a measure of justice. With regard to farmed animals, we are the ones who are in power. We are the ones who have the power to change our consumer habits. We are the ones who either put our money down for their lives, or boycott animal products.”

PowerSocial JusticeActivismVeganVeganismIntersectionalityBoycottAnimal EthicsAnimal StudiesFarmed Animals
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
Create image