Oct 14 2008
Why I Dislike PETA
There are hundreds of perfectly valid reasons to dislike PETA. The feminist websites get up in arms about the fact that they use the nude female form to incite interest from the public. This bothers me too. Not because I think it’s disrespectful - I think it’s distasteful, but that’s PETA’s game. And that’s it - it is just a game to PETA.
PETA shocks people because they can’t stand on the merits of their own arguments. Much like pro-life people hoisting signs of aborted fetuses. It shocks you. But what does it mean?
If you’re in their value system, it represents a battle of life and death, the slaughtering of an innocent life. PETA feels the same way about animal rights - the slaughtering of an innocent life. But their tactics only mean that if you’re in their value system. Outside their value system, things turn into a muddled moral area. That muddled moral area is not their strength because their tactics don’t hold up there, their arguments don’t. Those groups don’t want to fight on their arguments because they can’t win because there is no one moral system for mankind. Maybe that’s unfortunate, but it’s the way the cookie crumbles.
PETA will never succeed in ridding the world of fur, in converting everyone to a vegan. So instead of trying to get you to consider the real repercussions of doing so (including the positive ones, like bacon), they throw up pictures of slaughtered animals, they present you with naked women writhing in cages and expect those shocking sights to motivate you to their side.
It’s stupid, and the only people it attracts are immature and unconcerned with a real discussion of morals or our duty, as humans, to serve as watch-dogs for things that can’t protect themselves - animals, fetuses, the environment, our natural rights. Where each of those things falls on your personal moral continuum is your own business, but operating within your own continuum without regard for the differences among people is probably the stupidest way in the world to try to affect change.
That’s why I dislike PETA. Also - those naked girls just open up the conversation for a bunch of really stupid guys to start making stupid sex jokes about “meat”. To the men of the world - those jokes are stupid. Really. Not clever at all. If you’re trying to get laid, please come up with more clever jokes.