Freethinkers have a long record of challenging the status quo, so the newish word "speciesism" and all that it implies will be of special interest to them.

Newcomers to the word, however, may be uncomfortable with it at first, for the change in perception required of them is dramatic. In fact a first encounter with the idea of speciesism can be like a first experience of "seeing" one of those 3-D Magic Eye pictures that have become popular over the last few years: they both demand initial concentration and suspension of preconceptions before the new perception, quite suddenly, can be seen

Speciesism is analogous with racism, sexism, etc, and it is the logical next discrimination to confront in our social evolution. Two Chambers Dictionary (1993) definitions follow for comparison: racism: hatred, rivalry or bad feeling between races; belief in the inherent superiority of some races over others, usually with the implication of a right to be dominant; discriminative trcatment based on such belief. Speciesism: the assumption that man is superior to all other species of animals and that he is therefore justified in exploiting them to his advantage.

Dr Richard Ryder, Senior Consultant Psychologist and himself a one-time animal experimenter, coined the word "speciesism in 1970. He had noticed the attitudes of fellow experimenters and wondered why they accepted without misgiving painful, often needless, experiments on other species and without first questioning their validity. (We might recall the famous Milgram experiments in USA which showed how easy it was, in certain circumstances, for those in authority to bring about unquestioning obedience from groups of volunteers, even when they were being asked to give painful electric shocks to other humans:

the need to conform with the rest of the group is strong.) Richard Ryder concluded something more: that our own species was undervaluing the interests of other species in just the same way as racists undervalue the interests of those races they deem inferior to their own. Speciesism, like racism, is a prejudice — and therefore irrational — which we use to discriminate against those physically unlike ourselves.

Darwin’s The Origin of Species outraged the religious world with its revelations of our close kinship with other species, and even now its implications have not been fully accepted and acted upon. Workers for improvement in conditions for animals are sometimes accused of being "sentimental" about them. Quite the contrary. It was sentiment that made human animals choose to draw the line just beneath ourselves, Homo sapiens, placing us in lordly fashion well above all other species. That sharp line could well have been drawn differently had we been less arrogant, and mindful that we ourselves were the beings (and biased maybe?) setting the criteria. For by favouring ourselves in all concerns, whether vital to us or trivial, we were simply being dictated to by our "selfish" genes.

Steadily we are learning more about other animals, and our past measures for judging ourselves to be the supremely important species have proved to be misguided. (For instance, our brain is not the heaviest in relation to body size, we are not the only species with a language or complex social structure nor alone in using tools.)

All our past justifications are falling away, but we strive against the implications, the changes that accepting this knowledge might bring to our lives. Humans are just one of many interesting animals on this planet and a chimpanzee, in fact, has genes 98% similar to our own. The significant qualities we share with other animals are life and sentience: these are what we disregard when we exploit other species, now often to our own future detriment (the BSE crisis, antibiotics fed to farm animals, destruction of fauna and flora, etc.)

In the past, when slavery was generally considered morally acceptable, only the few who used their imagination/intelligence deduced that the "unlike" (eg those of another race) were sentient beings like themselves and therefore deserving of equal consideration of interest. Similarly, now, only a minority of us are rethinking our treatment of other species. Foremost among these is Peter Singer, professor of philosophy and director of the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University, Melbourne, whose books spearheaded the movement against speciesism in Australia and the USA. Singer believes our domination of animals to be morally indefensible.

On what criteria precisely has the human animal claimed its superiority over all other creatures, and are they relevant in the question of the morality of inflicting pain on them? Humans often argue that our "cleverness" gives us this right. White races have often used similar arguments or claimed that coloured races were less susceptible to pain, in order to justify slavery, etc. New thinking would claim that other animals deserve equal right of consideration to human animals where inflicting pain is concerned, for the appropriate question to ask is not whether they are clever but whether they are painient (a new word meaning "can suffer pain or distress"). We choose other animals because to us they seem of less consequence than ourselves — and because they are so easy to treat badly (a bully chooses a weaker being with nobody to defend it). And you’ve guessed! — we give the preferential treatment to those like ourselves, our own specics. So you and I have the comfort/luxury of knowing we are most unlikely to end up in a meat pie or on a dissecting table — powerful allies will protect us — whilst "outsiders" are cunningly selected instead. (Hush! Don’t let us be too complacent here; tyrannical aliens, perhaps even partial to roasted homo sapiens, could invade our planet at any time.)

Consider how religious dogma was perpetuated through the ages, so successfully that no well-grounded argument can shake its hold on believers. Then reflect on how our attitude to animals was also formed for us in the past. How to effect changes in people’s ingrained attitudes here, too, is no easy task.

Should you surf the net for references to speciesism you will notice, alongside the serious philosophical arguments, the entry "Speciesism: whatever next Ha Ha Ha". You will recall that it was not so long ago that the idea of women’s liberation provoked similar hilarity from the less imaginative. Resistance to new ways of thinking prevails in any age, but people do have particular difficulty with the idea of speciesism. Why is this? Because it is so entrenched in our society it is hard to see it for what it is. Because we are nearly all deeply involved in the exploitation. Because we do not want to know that we, ourselves, are the oppressors, however unintentionally. We have just been swept along with the tide, unaware.

For a thorough examination of the subject read Richard D Ryder’s Victims of Science (NAVS) and Peter Singer’s classic, Animal Liberation (Thorsons).

Freethinker, April 1999

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