Animal rights group PETA to launch bizarre porn website.. that will also show animal mistreatment

By Hannah Roberts

Their racy campaigns featuring nude celebrities and unsubtle innuendos, have already raised eyebrows.

Now, animal rights group PETA has gone a step further into the world of adult entertainment-by announcing it is to launch its own porn website.

The bizarre site will aim to raise awareness of veganism by offering pornographic material alongside graphic footage of animal mistreatment...

Read more: [www.dailymail.co.uk]

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The vegan movement is so messed up. Why does eating plants have to be attached to porn, religion, militarism, politics, ethics, etc. Why can't it just stop at eating plants?

I read this in the paper over the weekend and thought, fer real, PETA?

I'm guessing the reasoning went something like this: I know, let's come up with a campaign that exploits humans and their basest impulses to show how exploitive eating animals is! Everyone will quaver before our awesome undeniable genius!

Maybe the people at PETA are irony-proof



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2011 06:01PM by Tamukha.

Quote
Tam
Maybe the people at PETA are irony-proof

Lol, Tam. I already think so after the reports came out that they killed most of the animals in their care, as well as the recent ad campaign that urges people to stop objectifying animals and start objectifying women.

On the PETA porn site
Monday, August 22, 2011 — Adam Kotsko
When I was in seminary, there were several students who were interested in questions of animal rights. Such an interest is surely to be expected in the extremely liberal environs of Chicago Theological Seminary. More noteworthy to me, however, was the reaction from the black students whenever another (invariably white) student brought up animal rights. They rejected such concerns while so much work remained to be done to combat the mistreatment of other human beings and suspected that some students had embraced animal rights as a way of “skipping over” those concerns.

That is certainly unfair as a general statement about animal rights activism. At the same time, things like the PETA porn site make one wonder.

Interestingly, another concern that frequently came up in such conversations at CTS was that advocacy on behalf of animals would somehow detract from the continuing struggle of African Americans to be recognized as fully human after centuries in which they were so often classified as subhuman or animalistic. I was never sure how the two were connected — would people say it was okay to call African Americans apes, since we now respect animal rights? — and yet here again, the PETA campaign appears to fulfill those expectations in terms of old stereotypes of women. Women have historically been painted as somehow more “fleshly” than men and as passive sexual objects, and a huge part of women’s liberation has been to push back against those stereotypes, for instance by emphasizing women’s intelligence and sexual agency. The PETA porn site directly mobilizes those stereotypes in the service of animal rights.

If PETA can fight against the reduction of animals to usable flesh precisely by turning human women into usable flesh, then perhaps the notion of a similar campaign that would fight against the notion of animals as subhuman and therefore less important by mobilizing stereotypes of African Americans as somehow subhuman.

That is to say, there can be something sinister about animal rights activism, because there demonstrably is something sinister about the direction PETA is taking. More broadly, though, I’d say that there’s something potentially sinister about any rigorously single-issue type of advocacy.

riverhousebill,

A first salvo from People Who Just Don't Get PETA's Awesome Undeniable Genius?

If so, worrying--they haven't even started with this "campaign", and already, it's backfiring[rolls eyes]

To see issues of compassion and ethics as separate from each other is skewed IMHO. The more conscious one becomes of this in general, the more conscious one becomes of it specifically. How expanding the heart can be compartmentalized in terms of acknowledging the rights of non-human creatures to the exclusion of humans is bizarre. Love and compassionate behavior spill over from one area of the mind and life into another in my experience. One does not become a vegetarian but embrace racists principles, at least I don't think it goes that way.

coco,

You are a humanist. Now pretend you're a psychopath . . .

What I find ironic are the vegetarians and vegans who don't believe in exploiting, hurting or killing animals in any way, but think it's OK to kill a baby.

KidRaw,

Who here is advocating infanticide? Who?

Abortion

I wasn't pointing a finger at anyone on the board - you created a Straw Man Argument. Actually, two of them. One by misrepresenting what I was referring to (abortion not infanticide) and two by accusing me of accusing anyone in particular on this board.

I know what you were referring to; I was trying to subtly question the purpose of the segue. I did not accuse you of pointing your finger at anyone: I asked a rhetorical question. And really, what response are you expecting from your post? We are talking about an animal rights organization and their latest publicity campaign. Or aren't we?

I understand the argument you are trying to make, but not everything must go necessarily in the direction of conventional moral indignation. The original post asked us to consider something controversial enough, and which is germane to the awareness of the typical raw foods vegetarian. I notice you have not responded to the premise of the post, the way the OP, veghunter, and the rest of us have tried to. If abortion is all this makes you think of, I say:

a.) huh?, and
b.) I guess to you PETA's latest ad campaign is irrelevant, because in utero humans matter more. Or something.

If that's about it, why not just write that?

I dunno. Maybe you are just trying to illustrate my point that some people can't separate eating plants from political, moral, ethical or religious beliefs, Kidraw?

It's a shame because the thing that unites the members of boards like these and vegetarianism general is the eating plants (or raw plants) part, which is fairly benign in itself and tends to spur more amiable and productive discussion than the auxillary aspects of vegetarianism. But the focus for some seems always to be divisive points that they attach (unnecessarily, in my opinion) to the core act of eating plants. The reasons that people choose adopt a plant-eating lifestyle are varied, but so many people see prominent factions in the vegetarian movement (like PETA) attaching highly objectionable agendas to vegetarianism that the focus is lost.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2011 11:42PM by veghunter.

Tamukha Wrote:
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> Maybe the people at PETA are irony-proof

I was Replying to Tamukha's remark above, as did VegHunter in his reply following hers (Regarding Irony) , but I think Tamukha is saying (in a convoluted way) that we (or just me?) are only supposed to respond to the very first opening statement in a discussion.

More immediately, I was Reply to coco's remark (if you scroll up, you'll see that) which said --
---------------------------------

Quote

"To see issues of compassion and ethics as separate from each other is skewed IMHO. The more conscious one becomes of this in general, the more conscious one becomes of it specifically. How expanding the heart can be compartmentalized in terms of acknowledging the rights of non-human creatures to the exclusion of humans is bizarre. Love and compassionate behavior spill over from one area of the mind and life into another in my experience. One does not become a vegetarian but embrace racists principles, at least I don't think it goes that way."

In normal every day conversation, a discussion usually veers off into other directions - albeit referring to the same general subject and there is a flow and the conversation is kept alive. This conversation was flowing, until it was attacked.

So I was referencing VegHunter's opening remark, and also IRONY, from Tamukha's remark, and coco's latest remark. Trying to keep the flow.

I better go to Forum School to learn the Proper Protocol and Rules of how to Reply to a Thread in a Bulletin Board Discussion.

I can only imagine how I would feel if I was a newbie to this board, rather than being used to being reprimanded (by twisting my words and making an unfounded accusation) for espousing my opinion.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/2011 12:12PM by KidRaw.

KidRaw,

I am not suggesting that a thread cannot go off-tangent. Duh, most tend to, gradually and naturally. However, this thread was not gently drifing off into another direction--rather, you were inserting a tangential and very controversial topic into the thread. Kind of artificially. To drive it in a political direction. As is your wont, as I recall . . .

Look, you can respond to a post however you wish, but it's not frank to respond by using euphemism and insinuation and then to beg off claiming no ill intent. If you think PETA's purpose is misguided because you're more concerned about human fetuses, or people doing research for cancer therapies or whatever, why not just say so? That's direct and honest and pertains to the OP, which is informing us of the latest PETA campaign and how veghunter feels about it.

Or, you could start your own thread asking us to consider the value of human fetal life vis-a-vis animal rights. That would be controversial, but I don't think it would violate the rules[this isn't Operation Rescue's website, so you'd have to double check with a moderator]. It would also be a fair point, and would likely lead to an interesting discussion, if we all remained civil.

I'm sure you know that vegans, and even many plain vegetarians, take animal rights pretty seriously and tend to have a non anthropocentric view of the world compared to meatists. This is why the question of whether we should care about what PETA's doing because of other things that are problems, or what one may perceive to be a bigger problem, is an important question to consider. But I'm not sure, based on previous experience, that this is your intention, though.

KidRaw Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah...
>
> I better go to Forum School to learn the Proper
> Protocol and Rules of how to Reply to a Thread in
> a Bulletin Board Discussion.
>
> I can only imagine how I would feel if I was a
> newbie to this board, rather than being used to
> being reprimanded (by twisting my words and making
> an unfounded accusation) for espousing my opinion.

Hey, I'm working this side of the street! If you wanna thread hijack, ya gotta talk to Big Ronnie!