Whether we have feathers or fur, skin or scales, we’re all able to experience complex feelings such as love, sadness, pain, and joy and we all have a will to live — these things are not unique to humans.
PETA: ‘Speciesism – like sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination — is an oppressive belief system in which those with power draw boundaries to justify using or excluding their fellow beings who are less powerful. A human supremacist line of “reasoning” is used to defend treating other living, feeling beings like research tools, fabric, toys, or even food ingredients — even though they share our capacity for pain, hunger, fear, thirst, love, joy, and loneliness and have as much interest in freedom and staying alive as humans do…
From childhood, most humans are conditioned to view certain species as worthy of care and compassion and others as less important or unworthy—based on arbitrary human preferences. This toxic view also leads humans to draw groundless distinctions between animal species based on the worth of those animals to them. Consider the following examples: Animals are often referred to as property. Many humans call themselves an animal’s “owner” and refer to the animal as “it,” as if he or she were an inanimate object like a table or a chair…
It’s speciesist to believe that the differences between humans and other animals are enough to warrant torturing and killing those we don’t relate to. It’s speciesist to think that we are superior and are therefore somehow justified in raping, caging, and mutilating animals who don’t look exactly like us. It’s speciesist to exploit others because we don’t understand them fully or at all, to assume that they’re not as intelligent as we are when we measure their intelligence in human terms, and to dismiss their suffering because it benefits us…
Whether we have feathers or fur, skin or scales, we’re all able to experience complex feelings such as love, sadness, pain, and joy and we all have a will to live — these things are not unique to humans… Working to end speciesism means considering the impact of your actions and words on animals in your everyday life and working to eliminate any harm to them… Show your support via Twitter and Instagram by posting some of the following messages or creating your own using the hashtag #EndSpeciesism.’ SOURCE…
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