http://www.vegporn.com/article/yapping.html

WHOA.

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MIRHA-SOLEIL: I expect some non-sense from right wing bigots and anti-abortionists but what disturbs me even more is to see that kind of dangerously incongruent attitudes and rhetoric amongst radical activists. Being conscious of the mass-scale industrial exploitation and abuse of animals for food, clothing, and research (just to name a few!) is something I already find hard enough to live with. But even more revolting is to have so many social justice activists laugh at this form of exploitation, abuse, and misery and go even as far as ridiculing those of us who are determined to do something about it. And then there's the extent to which they will go to try to legitimize their behaviours, their privileged life-style choices that support an imperialist, neo-colonial, environmentally destructive and inhumane system, the same system they claim to be fighting. We have someone like Starhawk, for example, who travels the world to fight globalization but who then turns around and defends meat eating by saying that the Goddess has never told her it was wrong to kill animals and that cows have made a "bargain" with us humans, that they would allow us to kill and eat them in exchange for being allowed by us to live short "happy" lives. Well could someone please fax me a copy of that contract? I know other people who try to make themselves feel better about eating meat by taking their cheap packages of factory-farmed meat home, lighting up a stick of incense on their dishwasher top and then saying some "prayers" for the animals who have "offered" themselves for their spaghetti sauce. I know another woman who is into S/M and who buys expensive leather gears from some fashionable fetish shop and then "thanks" the cows for their "sacrifices". She has actually convinced herself that cows are these super spiritually charitable animals and that they really give a shit about her pathetic leather dyke games and pageant contests. So yes these kinds of absurd behaviours that I find even amongst people I have close political relationships with do make me angry. But what has really fuelled my activism around animal issues is not really anger. It is rather the incredible inspiration and hope I get when meeting and learning about activists, artists, and writers who, on every continent, selflessly dedicate their whole lives resisting animal abuse and fighting for animal liberation in their own class, cultural, religious, political, and national contexts.

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[ 27 February 2005: Message edited by: Anchoress ]

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It's heartening to see someone brave enough to say out loud what we all know, but avoid: that objectifying another conscious entity is objectifying another conscious entity: whatever box(es) it's classified in, it comes from the same motivation and ends in the same kind of pain.

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it comes from the same motivation and ends in the same kind of pain.

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Uh, you're lumping together the exploitation of humans, along with eating?

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her pathetic leather dyke games and pageant contests

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I certainly plead ignorance to most of the cultural or counter-cultural politics of feminism, gay culture, trans-sexuals and similar ideologies. But I think I can tell a con artist when I see one.

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We have someone like Starhawk, for example, who travels the world to fight globalization but who then turns around and defends meat eating by saying that the Goddess has never told her it was wrong to kill animals and that cows have made a "bargain" with us humans, that they would allow us to kill and eat them in exchange for being allowed by us to live short "happy" lives.

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I'm not sure who Starhawk is or what she stands for (I understand she is a sort of religious icon of some kind, but I'm not sure about anything else).

But folks don't actually take this stuff seriously do they? I mean, cows signing contracts with humans?

That's kind of out there with 'the holocaust didn't happen' and 'the earth is flat and the astronauts are fakers,' isn't it?

I was a vegetarian for many years, until I fell of the wagon about four years ago (interestingly enough that's about the time my daughter decided to become one--go figure).

SO I do eat meat and fish now, although all of us in my family try to stick to locally raised, organic, free-range goods. And I do support the humane treatment of animals, including respect for their habitats with respect to commercial activity--and I oppose how animals are treated and used by the commercial mass food industry.

I figure that's what helps make for a conscientious person and encourages social change.