Musings During Quarantine

Continuing to snack high on the food chain, I have begun to rigorously doubt my own sanity during these COVID times. Did I read what I think I read? Did I ingest some sort of hallucinogenic? Why would I wake up thinking that there were chicken rapists.

Thanks to the power of the internet, I was able to re-establish the tenuous grasp I had on reality. There was actually an incident. From The Daily Mail, unedited, unaltered, unmolested, here is the actual text.

Vegan activists separate chickens from cockerels on Spanish farm 'so the hens aren't raped' because they do not give 'consent' in video released by 'anti-specist, transfeminist' group

• Almas Veganas (Vegan Souls) from Girona, Spain,  identify as anti-speciesist, transfeminist and libertarian
• The activists said they based the video on the concept of consent for the hens
• They smashed the eggs because they said they belonged to the chickens
• The video was viewed on Twitter 570,000 times with users asking 'is this a joke?'

I have so many questions. The first is pickup or delivery. After that, these questions come to mind:

1. How did the transfeminists learn to speak ‘chicken?’
2. What the hell is a transfeminist? Is that feminist in transition?
3. Are these “anti-speciesists” followers of Richard D. Ryder and his 1970 notion of speciesism? Are they the Juanita Come Latelies and followers of Peter Singer?
4. Were the cockerels given due process to present their side of the story? Were they given counseling? Re-education? Is there a chicken gulag? Can a cock be rehabilitated? If we believe the internet, learning that a chicken’s lifespan is 3 to 10 years, will these chickens be sentenced to chicken prison? Chicken parole? Compassionate release?
5. How did the hens communicate their lack of consent to this crime of unimaginable proportions and suffering? Are there transcripts so that when we build the museum located at 101 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW Washington, DC 20024-2126, we don headsets and listen to the translations as we perambulate the museum?
6. If I don't speak out against chicken rape, am I complicit? Am I a chicken raper?

I would like to channel my spirit animal, Mugatu, when I read things like the Daily Mail headline. Let’s have a think, shall we. I say we start at:

“The smashed the eggs because they said they belonged to the hens.”

Well, convenient for Almas Veganas. Smashed eggs can’t hatch. We can’t evaluate if the eggs were actually fertilized. Seems like this is the destruction of evidence. Is this not the same as destroying a rape kit? No. Hell no. Emphatically, Hell, NO. But in the minds of the Almas Veganas, it must be. Immediately I am suspicious of this destruction. Why? Cui bono? Well, the cockerels. I am thinking this is the first real evidence of a cock block. If the cockerels hired these actors to pretend to be Le Front De Liberation du Poule, or their splinter group, Almas Veganas, to destroy the eggs, then there is no evidence of paternity. I think we may have discovered an international ring of paternity-avoiding cocks.

On to the subject of “belonged to the hens.” We are, I believe, to assume that the eggs were in the possession of the chicken traffickers. As an aside, the affront of this band of degenerates, to elevate the status of yard bird to that of humans and claim some kind of parallel crime is unconscionable. Having actually worked with and for the victims of real rape, this farce loses its humor value and stirs desires of caning the perpetrators.

What we have here is not a failure to communicate but a failure to cogitate. Chickens are not humans. Human life is of supreme value. The saving of human life is the summation of the Torah, the redemption story of the crucifixion of Christ, and the driving impetus behind our EMT’s, our doctors, nurses, pharmaceuticals, and pharmacological technology. There’s a Red Cross. A Red Crescent. Should we inform them of their inherent bias?

But then there is this guy. Richard D. Ryder. The “father” of “speciesism.” Seems like there is a latent paternity issue to deal with here…given the patriarchal nature of following Dr. Ryder as the father of the movement. Here is his quote from the speciesism wiki page (cf. page 81 of Animals, Men, and Morals, 1971) ^[1]:

In as much as both "race" and "species" are vague terms used in the classification of living creatures according, largely, to physical appearance, an analogy can be made between them. Discrimination on grounds of race, although most universally condoned two centuries ago, is now widely condemned. Similarly, it may come to pass that enlightened minds may one day abhor "speciesism" as much as they now detest "racism." The illogicality in both forms of prejudice is of an identical sort. If it is accepted as morally wrong to deliberately inflict suffering upon innocent human creatures, then it is only logical to also regard it as wrong to inflict suffering on innocent individuals of other species. ... The time has come to act upon this logic.

Again, we hear Richard Weaver demands we stop arguing from analogy and use deduction. But with the logic-rejecting, deduction is a dirty word. Argument from analogy lacks precision and opens the door to comparing dissimilar things as though they were similar.

The logical leap of “we used to discriminate based on race but are now an enlightened species” to “we will someday be more enlightened and no longer discriminate based on species” is the verbal shyster’s sleight of hand. Restated, “denying rights and privileges to a human group based on skin tone is the same as rejecting rights and privileges to other species because skin tone and species are equivalent.”  

But how is this not the same? The argument equates a phenotypical expression at the Species level with the general existence of another animal at the Order level. What, Willis, is that you speak of? Return to 7^th grade science. DKPCOFGS (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species). If you need a mnemonic, the internet offers Katy Perry Comes Over For Grape Soda. She needs to stay away because I am not a firework. I will not be ignorantly marginalized as a momentary expression of patriarchal fluid release of light and color, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Humans are, if we are going to pretend that our current love affair of Nominalism is true, are Kingdom ‘Animalia,’ Phylum ‘Chordata,’ Class ‘Mammalia.’ Chickens are same Kingdom, Phylum, and that’s it. End of similarities. Chickens are birds. Class = Aves.  Humans and Chickens differ at the Class, Order, Family, Genus, SPECIES levels. The issue is not preference of one “species” over another. The same species was never under consideration in his argument from analogy but such clarity is obfuscated. And that is why argument from analogy opens the door to so many false equivalencies.

Maybe they should rename their movement to Domainism. This is far more accurate, scientifically speaking. As a species that reads and writes, we Homos need to stop placing arbitrary, hierarchical valuations on any of the three Domains (Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya). We ought^[2] to ‘value’ bacteria, protists, fungi, plants, and animals the same. At least according to the attempted logic of Ryder et al.

For a moment, envision we follow through with Ryder’s demand: “if it is accepted as morally wrong to deliberately inflict suffering upon innocent human creatures, then it is only logical to also regard it as wrong to inflict suffering on innocent individuals of other species [Domains?]. ... The time has come to act upon this logic.”^[3] Ok. ^[4]

Let’s do that. Imagine a scientist files a class action (maybe in this case, a Domain Action) lawsuit demanding the immediate stop to the wanton murder of the fungi in the environment. Why? Because the old school Speciesism platform states that to prohibit the infliction suffering on one species but not another is illogical. So, dear Ryder, which species? The ones you choose? The ones I choose? If all species are equal, Mr. Ryder, will you stop taking anti-biotics? What will you eat? Can we also say that it is “wrong” (why do atheists always want to inject their morality into an argument?) to harm any individual of any species? Would that make suicide illegal? If meat is murder, then salad is genocide©.

So, we get the next word that is the darling of all who want to avoid having to prove a point: enlightened. Ryder’s carefully chosen words additionally prejudice his attempt at argument. His argument from analogy has already the poisoned the well of logical thinking. Differentiation of treatment based on species is “darkened” thinking. We need “enlightened” thinking. Why do atheists depend so heavily on religious language? Didn’t Bertrand and the Positivists rescue us from this cave of ignorance?

Oh wait, this is not religious thinking, this is language of White Supremacy. Light and Dark are the language of the oppressor. Dark like persons of color? Light like White persons? This is why we can’t have nice things, Richard. Time for some sloganeering to move things along.

Confess. Don’t Oppress©.

Reject Your Whiteness. Redistribute your largesse©.

Using ‘enlightened,’ which is a subjective term, to make an argument about objective reality is beyond disingenuous. Reminds us of the phrase “progressive.” A word generally employed by those who want to change the status quo by seizing power to effect the changes they claim are “better.”

Those are bold statements, Cotton. Can you back them up? Well, yes. Ryder et al. are claiming that the old, false way of thinking, to impose arbitrary, hierarchical valuation of humans above sponges, is not truly aligned with reality as more accurately described by ‘science.’ Of course, his arbitrary valuation of one kind of thinking over another is equally hierarchical and arbitrary. Look away.  The horror. The Horror.

We appreciate that Ryder at least admits that there is objective reality. We also appreciate that Ryder et al (those that subscribe to “speciesism”) agree that the whole enterprise of binomial nomenclature is both hierarchical and descriptive of a repeatedly observable reality.

[1] Dear Tee-Witter, please cancel this man. His book title is non-inclusive, binary gender reinforcing, misogynistic in its promoting ‘males’ to the solo category of those who are to address issues of science and morality

[2] Nelson Muntz's ‘haha’ rings out because ought is a moral imperative imposed, in this case, on the amoral science of classification.

[3] page 81 of Animals, Men, and Morals, 1971. Brackets added.

[4] We here at Brony Ranch love the fact that Ryder, like most of his contemporaries, are fully convinced that a change in opinion, a change in how we ‘regard’ something, is what determines the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of an action. How weird would it be if an entire country began to regard the genocide of one ‘race’ as a good thing?