Danielle MacDonald: Animal Rights are Women’s Rights
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PEOPLE
I am you, only different.
Human beings create temporary and arbitrary boundaries to exclude beings who aren’t like them. Human beings have justified wars, slavery, sexual violence, and military conquests through the mistaken belief that those who are “different” do not experience suffering and are not worthy of moral consideration.
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals
ETHICAL
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
We are taught the Golden Rule as young children, and all major religions teach principles of nonviolence and kindness. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Ethical treatment—the Golden Rule—must be extended to all living beings: reptiles, mammals, fish, insects, birds, amphibians, and crustaceans.
TREATMENT
Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.
All beings desire freedom to live a natural life, according to their inherent desires and instincts. While the lives of all beings necessarily involve some amount of suffering, human beings must stop deliberately inflicting suffering on all beings for our own selfish desires. We lose nothing in replacing a cheeseburger with a veggie burger or a leather purse with a fabric one. But beings we exploit lose their lives just for our fleeting fancy.
ANIMALS
We are all animals.
We believe all beings deserve liberty and respect not because they share the characteristics we admire in ourselves but because they are living beings. We share the same evolutionary origins, we inhabit the same Earth, and we are ruled by the same laws of nature. We are all the same.
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / Israel Against Live Shipments / We Animals
