Feminism and Fur

FUR COMMISSION USA COMMENTARY, MARCH 18, 2003
Revised Jan. 20, 2004.

Feminism and Fur

By FCUSA Executive Director Teresa Platt

Feminists regularly accuse People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) of going beyond simply exploiting female bodies to sell their products to actually peddling "soft-porn", entry-level pornography.(1)

In 2002, Fox News featured two animal rights professionals who claimed to be feminists debating the merits of PeTA's "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" ad series. The two women agreed that they wouldn't wear "fur" (2) but disagreed over whether PeTA's ads of half naked females demeaned women. The PeTA employee, predictably, defended shedding her clothes to garner column inches for PeTA while her opponent held steadfast that PeTA exploited women and damaged the feminist movement.

In 2004, after CBS refused to air a PeTA advertisement involving female flesh failing to excite a meat-eating man, spokeswoman Lisa Lange complained, "We just want to be able to present our jiggly women."(6)

And PeTA shocks us once again with its comparison of humans to barnyard animals ...

Jesus Wept for Jerusalem; PeTA Wept for the Ass

(Update: PeTA's Non-Apology Apology: The group still equates animal killings to the Holocaust, by Wesley Smith, Discovery Institute, May 6, 2005. See also: PETA's President Just Doesn't Get It, by Rabbi Avi Shafran, IsraelInsider, May 13, 2005.)

Tax-exempt "charitable" People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) has launched the West Coast tour of its "Holocaust on a Plate" campaign, comparing fish, beef, chicken and lamb dinners to the Holocaust.

"The point is that the mind-set that made the Holocaust possible is the same mind-set that makes possible the mass slaughter of animals for food," said Bruce Friedrich of PeTA.

Wrong, Bruce. It is the mind-set that equates people with the other animals that made the Holocaust possible.

Just a few weeks earlier, PeTA wrote a letter to Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yassar Arafat complaining that a donkey was killed when it was used as a "suicide bomber" to carry explosives into Jerusalem to kill people. PeTA wept for the ass.

Over two thousand years ago, just before the Passover celebration (a traditional feast of lamb), Jesus of Nazareth instructed his disciples to find a colt, the foal of an ass, so he could ride it into Jerusalem in fulfillment of an ancient scripture predicting that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem. "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass." The Bible tells us that when he saw Jerusalem, Jesus wept.

Jesus wept for Jerusalem. PeTA wept for the ass.

As we enter Passover and Easter, among the most sacred holidays of the Jewish and Christian religions, let us all pray for peace.

PeTA's Version of Hallelujah

"If we really believe that these animals do have the same right to be free from pain and suffering at our hands, then of course we're going to be, as a movement, blowing stuff up and smashing windows. For the record, I don't do this stuff, but I do advocate it. I think it's a great way to bring about animal liberation, and considering the level of the atrocity and the level of the suffering, I think it would be a great thing if, you know, all of the fast-food outlets, and these slaughterhouses, and these laboratories, and the banks that fund them exploded tomorrow. I think it's perfectly appropriate ... [applause] I think it's perfectly appropriate for people to take bricks and toss them through the windows, and, you know, everything else along the line. Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it."
(PeTA's Vegan Campaign Coordinator Bruce Friedrich in an address to the Animal Rights 2001 national convention in McClean, VA.)

Advocacy group decries PeTA's inhumane treatment of women.

As part of their "PeTA Peep Show," the tax-exempt PeTA corporation flies employees all over the world during warm summer months to shed most of their clothes in an exceedingly successful effort to gather publicity. "My body is my instrument," those in theater say, and PeTA's antics are, most definitely, theater. Even Howard Stern has hosted PeTA's "Lettuce Ladies" on his show. Howard threatened to kill fish and cockroaches if the ladies refused to show some skin, so the PeTAphiles complied, proving their dedication to their cause.(3)

There is an insatiable appetite for images of nudity, and pornography is a multi-billion-dollar business which treats human beings as throw-away commodities. The young and vulnerable shouldn't be pressured by adults into performing acts which they might regret later, such as getting arrested for indecent exposure on a street corner in Phoenix or taking off their clothes because they need a paycheck, are under peer pressure or, heaven forbid, because Howard Stern needs to fill airtime.

That said, it is legal for people to strip for pleasure, money, tofutti, synthetics, any reason, as long as one doesn't break common decency laws. As a corporation, PeTA can pay people to do whatever is legal to sell its product. Most corporations use good-looking people to hawk cars, cigarettes, and, yes, fur coats, so there is no reason to limit corporate PeTA.

But PeTA is not just any corporation. PeTA is a non-profit tax-exempt corporation sanctioned by the IRS as engaging in work for the "public benefit." Should we taxpayers support women stripping on street corners, or for Howard Stern on national TV, as tax exempt public benefit charitable work?

If it's o.k. for tax-exempt PeTA to run a "Peep Show" of traveling strippers, shouldn’t the IRS allow a tax-exempt corporation to launch a series of ads of naked women AND men under the slogan "I'd rather be naked in fur"? In fact, we can't think of any other non-profit which uses nudity as commonly as PeTA does. Have you ever heard of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) stripping to stop drunk drivers or diabetics going naked for insulin research? It hasn't happened because most non-profits attempt to adhere to basic standards of decency. So why does the IRS give an exemption to non-profit PeTA to ship strippers around the world? Shouldn’t this sort of activity be done by a regular for-profit corporation, not a "charity"?

Beyond Nudity: Violence against Women

Beyond the continuing debate over whether PeTA's use of nudity may or may not exploit human beings or be deserving of tax-exempt status, there is a more serious side to PeTA's lack of feminist sensitivity.

PeTA's website is running a movie of a woman being beaten to death in a subway by a black-garbed bat-wielding male (who appears to be dressed in black leather and wool). The woman is in a flamboyant fluffy, wild-style fur coat surrounded by others wearing more conservative cold-weather clothing: leather, wool, shearling, all sorts of natural animal-based fibers which PeTA also opposes. We assume PeTA will one day "progress" to a movie showing shoppers being beaten to death for wearing sheepskin and leather but, for now, PeTA's video shows people fleeing as the women is attacked, beaten, murdered, and stripped of her clothing. She is left lying on the ground in a flesh-colored outfit.

After September 11, PeTA claimed to have banned this ad in the US as too violent while they continued to promote it on their website.(4)

Worse yet, these brutal images were chosen and approved by the PeTA corporation as a visual method of equating the killing of animals (which law and ethics require be done quickly and humanely) with the brutal murder of a female of the human species. PeTA sees no difference at all and this is demeaning to ALL humans, not just those of the female gender.

Think about it – what if PeTA made a video of a white male child being beaten to death and compared it to the slaughter of a pig? How would you feel?

How about if PeTA made a film of a black man being shot in the head and equated it with the killing of Black Angus beef cattle? Is this image repugnant to you?

If these images are unacceptable, then we must ask why are images of a white female being beaten to death seen as appropriate imagery?

And why, in 2003, does no one object to the comparison of a woman to a farm animal?

Animal rightists use demeaning and absolutely obscene analogies. One of the worst is their comparison of African circus elephants to black slaves.

Where are the feminists? Where are the humanists? Where are the religious leaders? Why aren't we ALL outraged?

Even worse, why are such images and the sale of such a product given tax-exempt public benefit status by our government?

Beyond Bovines: Animal "Liberation" Denigrates Human Liberation

PeTA's in-house confused "theologian" Bruce Friedrich states, "The animal rights movement is a movement for justice, just like abolition, suffrage, civil rights, and women's rights" while PeTA issues one press release after another attacking people and organizations, expanding, day after day, their circle of targets.

Animal rightists use this sort of tortured logic all the time because they see little or no difference between human beings and the other species on the planet. Feminists, and those who oppose discrimination in all its forms, should see through this farce quickly. Instead, too many welcome these arguments as if they hold some sort of deep meaning for humans seeking liberation from stereotypes and prejudice.

Politically-active vegans are working to establish a global plants and synthetics-only food and clothing policy, claiming that establishing rights for animals, "liberating" animals, is just "widening our circle of compassion" - a "logical" extension of civil rights to the 9 million species of animals (including insects) that share this planet.

But chickens are not, and never will be, people - never mind Chicken Run. And Babe doesn't talk and will never run for office no matter how much children would like it to be so.(5)

Heaven help the confused vegans when the non-human primates they seek to liberate sign out what, as omnivores, they really want: "We want hamburgers and we want them now!"

The day that bovines elect one of their own to represent them, we will be there at the U.N., with bells on, welcoming them into civilized society. Until then, cows are not mini-versions of human females. Humans are not cattle and, although sometimes we may act like them, we are not sheep.

So let us make this very clear: It is demeaning and insulting for oppressed groups, as they struggle to participate fully in society without limitations imposed by prejudice, to be compared as equal to barnyard animals.

And we reject any message promoted by a tax-exempt non-profit "charity" that uses images of violence against women and minorities in order to sell its product. That means you, PeTA.

NOTES:

(1) Beyond charges of exploitation of humans, many also object to PeTA's trafficking in animal "snuff films", seedy videos of animals being abused and killed. See "Saving Society from Animal Snuff Films", FCUSA commentary, December 1998.

(2) We assume the Fox News guests were rejecting wild and domesticated animal furs, but are unsure whether they would wear sheepskin coats and Ugg boots. Leather - fur with the hair removed – and silk and wool weren't discussed at all.

(3) Kayla Rae Worden, the first to shed her shirt, is probably the most comfortable with taking off her top since she started life as a man. Worden is a transsexual (see "Plastic People Fail to Fluster Supercomposed Super-Model", FCUSA commentary, November 2002) who owes her "nice, natural breasts," as Howard Stern called them, to research done on animals, a process she works against daily as an employee of PeTA. Worden is all about limiting choices and focuses on females as his/her targets regularly. We suggest that PeTA cancel their Summer "Peep Shows" in the Southwest and schedule them for the Midwest from December through March. Now that would really show commitment!

(4) See also "PeTA Wants to Run Anti-Fur Ad in Great Britain", by Brian Carnell for AnimalRights.Net, Mar. 11, 2002; Outside link.

(5) See commentaries on the message of Babe.

(6) "CBS cries foul on PeTA, MoveOn Super Bowl ads", Reuters, Jan. 15, 2004.

See also:

Why I Hate Vegetarians: People should not be bullied into giving up meat by humourless, judgmental souls using spurious arguments, by Julie Bindel, founder of Justice for Women, June 2005. (Outside link to Man In Nature)

Jesus was an Omnivore FCUSA commentary on PeTA's "Jesus Was a Vegetarian" campaign, November 1999.

More on PeTA's Warped Priorities from the Center for Consumer Freedom.

In Their Own Words Outlandish quotes from the mouths of PeTAphiles.

Special thanks to Nikki Craft for the inspiration for this article. See PeTA: Where Only Women Are Treated Like Meat by Nikki Craft.

For further information contact: Teresa Platt, Executive Director, Fur Commission USA, PMB 506, 826 Orange Avenue, Coronado, CA 92118-2698 USA, (619) 575-0139, (619) 575-5578/fax, furfarmers@aol.com, www.furcommission.com. See also Teresa's blog and Facebook.

To take a cyber-tour of a fur farm, visit FCUSA's Fur on Film.

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