Animal Activist Says Johnny Weir Fur Episode a Defeat, Not Victory

I have no problem with pie throwing. I think some situations call for a pie in the face. I think the armchair activists have way too much time on their hands. Do all you can do to help animals and let others do the same.

....are the reason veganism is so unappealing. “Stop hunting -trapping- fishing -ranching-farming-medical research-rodeos-circuses- zoos -fly swatting or we will kill you!!! Even in the comments above, words like barbaric, exploitation, and victim are used to describe all animal use by humans. This is contrary to the natural order and the 10,000 years of progression of mankind.

Remember:
Horses love to be worked.
Labradors love retrieving in icy water .
Sheep want haircuts.
Vegan animals are food for everyone who isn’t vegan .

And

Fur is green .

If PETA doesn't want us eating tasty animals , we need recipes for preparing PETA members for dinner.

I am just thrilled that yet again the animal rights extremists show themselves as the moral bullies that they are. Things like this totally destroy their credibility and ensure that they will remain a fringe movement that appeals to very few people.

Single issue campaigns are problematic in that they misinform the public as to what we owe animals and why by reinforcing arbitrary distinctions among forms of animal use and among different animal speciesism, implying e.g. that wearing a fur coat is worse and different in kind from wearing leather shoes because cows are less morally valuable than foxes, when really, all animals are equally inherently valuable in virtue of their sentience and all forms of animal use are equally morally objectionable in that they serve transparently trivial human interests like pleasure, amusement, and convenience.

The damaging educational effect of single issue campaigns against meat , for example, can be seen in the way the public thinks that eating meat is worse and different in kind from consuming eggs and milk, even though, as Francione has put it, there is probably more suffering in glass of milk than in a pound of steak and cows and hens end up in the same slaughterhouse as their meat “counterparts” anyway. Further, this is having a disabling effect on vegan advocacy in that it deludes people into thinking that vegetarianism is “enough” whereas veganism is at best unnecessary and at worst, extreme and fanatical, when really, consuming milk and eggs and eating meat are morally indistinguishable in that they both involve inflicting suffering and death on animals for reasons pleasure and convenience. Weir’s bemused response to the campaign against his proposing to wear fur is instructive: it shows that the public realizes, even if only intuitively, that, because there is no moral distinction between fur and leather, for example, it is arbitrary and confusing to focus on fur while remaining silent on the plight of cows who are exploited and killed for their leather, or to be vocal in support for vegetarianism while declining to defend the rights of the victims of the dairy and egg industries.

This implies and should make us realize that the problem of animal exploitation cannot in consistency and without confusion be as it were divided up and addressed piecemeal, one form of animal use (meat first, then dairy and eggs and so on) at a time and one animal species at a time (foxes first, then cows and so on) and must instead be addressed by focusing on the immorality of all animal use by calling for people to go vegan.

Single issue campaigns, together with welfarism more generally, also impose a massive opportunity cost on social justice by diverting time and resources away from vegan education . Imagine if all the time and resources that has been spent over the years uselessly singling out celebrities for their use of this or that animal product had instead been spent on clear and unequivocal vegan education?

Let’s forget single issue campaigns, which are confused and confusing, as shown by Weir’s response to animal advocates who should know better, and instead put all our time and resources into seriously tackling the problem of animal use by educating the public about veganism.

As Live Vegan said, it's sad that it is left to a non-animal advocate to point out the inconsistencies of a kind of animal advocacy the result of which is anything but a ''victory'' for animals in that it does absolutely nothing to educate Weir or the public about why it is wrong to use animals – of whatever species – for whatever purpose.

The reaction to Weir's intention to wear fur is as illustrative as disturbing an example of the fact that the confusion of many animal people is stronger than that of those who they are supposed to be educating about why we should not use or consume any animal product. It is a defeat for animals also in that it feeds into the misconception of animal rights as having anything to do with violence or the threat thereof.

As Mylene mentioned, campaigns against wearing fur are an ''easy sell'' since most people don't do The same applies to vivisection. That's why both forms of animal use are the ''classical,'' most prominent targets of single issue campaigns. It is simply easier to attack a stranger for for a practice that constitutes a small fraction of overall animal exploitation than to attack a family member, co-worker, neighbour, for eating hot dogs and wearing leather shoes. But doing the latter would be as wrong and pointless as doing the former is.

It is always the supporters of single issue campaigns which, instead of promoting not using any animals at all, focus arbitrarily on a form of animal use which they perceive and present as being worse than others, who resort to, or sympathize with, violence against a group of animal users to whom they themselves and those with whom they socialise don't belong.

Abolitionist animal rights advocacy means engaging people non-violently in talking about veganism . Going vegan and educating others creatively about why they should go vegan is the most important and effective way of helping animals.

The fact that single-issue campaigns like anti- fur campaigns thoroughly confuse the public is evident to me whenever I speak to friends and coworkers who insist to me that they would never (ever!) wear it. They say this although their closets are filled with with leather shoes/belts, silk blouses and wool sweaters and their fridges are filled with meat , dairy and egg products.

The perpetuation of this confusion by an animal advocacy group does as much harm to the movement--as much of a disservice to nonhuman animals --as promoting any other sort of new welfarist agenda. The truth is that most people don't wear fur, so it's an easy sell. Fur has become this sort of taboo they can embrace with relief to avoid having to think about the animals they consume in every single other aspect of their lives.

I want to get people thinking about all of the animals they regularly consume each and every ordinary day of their lives. I want to get them thinking about taking the interests of nonhuman animals seriously and to educate them about veganism . I don't want to get them finger-pointing at some celebrity who's time in the spotlight has being exploited and who's been made some sort of whipping boy .

The only victory for other animals is to get their personhood back. That's true whether they are 'free-living' or caged. Animals are property under the law . They may be personal property (e.g., the cats who live with me), state property (e.g., endangered species), institutional property (e.g., cows in a factory or family farm) or property waiting to be claimed (e.g., rabbits, foxes, squirrels, whales , seals and other animals).

But that they are different types/understandings of property socially does not meaningfully change the fact that they are not free, that they are not persons under the law, that they can be seized or killed at any moment. Property is property. Breed-specific legislation against pit bulls makes it clear that so long as other animals are property, none of them are safe .

The answer is not confusing the public about how best to help animals (which is veganism ) or getting one guy not to wear one fur to one occasion, who then badmouths animal advocates from here to Kingdom Come (whether his accusation is true or not). The answer is educating people in nonconfrontational ways to understand that other animals have a right not to be used as property, that we should go vegan in light of that right, that veganism is easy to do and that we should all work dilligently toward the emancipation of other animals so that they may live their lives on their own terms.