{"id":766661,"date":"2022-01-13T10:52:59","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T15:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=766661"},"modified":"2022-01-13T11:08:11","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T16:08:11","slug":"karen-davis-what-does-it-mean-to-be-an-animal-lover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=766661","title":{"rendered":"Karen Davis: What does it mean to be an ‘animal lover’?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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It is time to retire the term 'animal lover', which is as demeaning and patronizing toward animals as this same type of attribution would be in being used to characterize a socially privileged person who 'loves' an oppressed human population.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

KAREN DAVIS:<\/strong> The term \u201canimal lover\u201d sounds like a relic of a bygone era, pre-1990s at least. For modern animal rights advocates, \u201canimal lover\u201d sounds quaint, but the mainstream media seem content with it. Granted, being an \u201canimal lover\u201d is better than being an animal hater, but should we embrace this attribution as a tribute to the designee or as a favor to animals? What might animals say if they could weigh in?<\/em><\/p>\n

Tributes to celebrity actress Betty White, who died December 31, 2021 at age 99, led me to raise the question in a comment I posted to Animals 24-7\u2019s more sobering look at Betty White\u2019s decades-long association with animal welfare. The thoughts presented here expand that comment. I knew Betty White from ads for Golden Girls, a popular TV comedy in which she starred from 1985-1992. Scanning tributes to her in early January, 2022 prompted by her death, I saw among the accolades that she was a front for the American Humane Association\u2019s seal of assurances that \u201cNo Animals Were Harmed\u201d in the making of films in which animals appeared under AHA\u2019s oversight. I think there is evidence to the contrary.<\/em><\/p>\n

A question I asked was, did Betty eat animals? She not only ate them; she publicized her consumption of animals to the point of being the celebrity booster for a hot dog business in Los Angeles. Of course, she is beloved by the owner of that business. A hot dog has been named for her with proceeds from sales going to the Los Angeles Zoo.<\/em><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the term \u201canimal lover,\u201d whether attributed to a celebrity or anyone else, suggests that the person may be more cloyingly sentimental than truly sensitive toward nonhuman animals, their feelings, needs and miserable frustration in institutional captivity. Thus I believe it is time to retire the term \u201canimal lover,\u201d which is as demeaning and patronizing toward animals as this same type of attribution would be in being used to characterize a socially privileged person who \u201cloves\u201d an oppressed human population.<\/em><\/p>\n

The fact that Betty White has been gushed over, almost universally, by celebrities, media, and other commentators signals that she was an \u201canimal lover\u201d who ensured that the status quo would not be disturbed and would even be enshrined. Betty\u2019s love for animals is reminiscent of white people\u2019s professed \u201clove\u201d for cute little \u201ccolored\u201d children, as reflected in Harriet Beecher Stowe\u2019s 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin: Life Among the Lowly. Such \u201clove\u201d is quite compatible with an approval of enslavement of the \u201cloved\u201d objects of affection…<\/em><\/p>\n

Betty White was a public figure who constructed a persona for public consumption. The fact that she died or is still fresh in the grave does not exempt her public doings from examination, including criticism when the shadow falls between fiction and fact. I believe she honestly cared about some animals \u2013 the kinds of animals it is socially \u201csafe\u201d to \u201clove\u201d and the kind of care that does not rock the boat. At the same time, the animals she was photographed with, whether wildlife captives or pampered pets, were props for her celebrity image. She and her publicists knew that the public loved her twinkly face snuggled up to captive creatures who were made to appear to \u201csmile\u201d for the camera. <\/em>SOURCE…<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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