Joe and Unleesh, PLEASE respect the wishes of other EcoFem list members and
take your exchanges into private email!
----------
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: STUDIES IN WOMEN AND ENVIRONMENT <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: the veggie debate
> Date: Saturday, January 23, 1999 10:37 PM
>
> In a message dated 1/23/99 8:24:44 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
> << Which of these logical rules do you consider an impediment to clear
> thinking?
> >>
>
> I'm not going to get into it with you over the pedantic institution known
as
> "Logic", that police officer of thought. If you choose to channel
yourself
> into arcane and mystifying institutions, be my guest. But I don't follow
> "rules" when I think ; I think in other ways. If you are going to declare
that
> anyone who doesn't follow your style of thought, or the style of thought
that
> exists in a particular dominant institution of academia is not thinking
or not
> thinking clearly, you're simply centering your style of thought as the
> standard for everyone else, another form of arrogance.
>
> Why don't we address the institution of factory farming? This doesn't
involve
> us in humans versus animals ; the simple fact that it has one of the
highest
> turnovers in workers, and is considered to be an extremely brutal job
(the
> slaughterhouse), should tell us that this is negative for human as well
as
> nonhuman animals.
>
> If you are a farmer out in the middle of nowhere and have raised Bessie
your
> whole life, and decide to kill Bessie and eat Bessie, that has a totally
> different context than the industrial farming of "meat", which is a
euphemism
> for slaughtered flesh of animals! Now it may be that you have allowed
Bessie
> as close to a species-life as you can, and have cared for her, and
allowed her
> to live a full life, and "mercifully" killed her. I will leave that
ethical
> decision with you, as long as it is a personal decision you make, though
I
> will engage in ethical discussion regarding the complexities of that
decision,
> and what sorts of inchoate implications are involved in that action. I
don't
> think anyone who thinks that humanimals are superior to nonhumanimals is
in
> any position to make a good ethical choice in this matter ; I will refer
to
> ecotribal peoples who consider other animals to be equals if not
superiors in
> some regards. But when you begin to commodify the relationship between
you and
> Bessie, and multiply it, and take her and her kind out of their
species-life
> and make them fit the machine, and when you breed a pig that is so heavy
it is
> a burden on its own legs, and when you debeak chickens, and when you
place
> animals in cages so small it's more like a jail than any kind of life,
and
> where in droves they can hear the screams of other animals as they are
marched
> to their death in terror, then you are talking about something totally
> different altogether. And it's important to have the sophistication to
> appreciate this difference.
>
> Do you kill and eat dogs and cats? Why not? Simply because they are
others'
> "property"? What about stray dogs and cats?
