Segregative approaches

Question about segregative approaches, such as found in the discussion here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csydct, where conservationist approaches typically stand in conflict with the concepts of animal rights, for a large part by ignoring aspects affecting nonhuman life as a whole.

We come from a radical antispeciesist approach, hence we need to raise a few questions:

Question 1 about the saving biological diversity approach:

  • Are they for captive breeding programs to halt the extinction of some species? If yes, how do they see the problematics of zoos? Do such problematics matter in the discussion about extinction, its causes and how the driving forces behind natural destruction can be addressed?

Question 2 about the saving biological diversity approach:

  • Life is a net, yet equally individual lives are meaningful (with humans and nonhumans). Positively seen we understand how life is built as an interdependent net. Yet oppressive mechanism also function as a “net”, yet one of destructiveness, meaning: Wildlife stands amidst mechanisms of a systemic zoocide and ecocide. When we name the net of life, we should also discuss the destructive mechanisms of the socio-political scale and not just highlight biological functioning.

Question 3 about the saving biological diversity approach:

  • When we face destructiveness that targets and sacrifices biological diversity, why do we exclude the nonhuman lives that are barred from the natural spaces and locked into machineries? Why is the connection of destructiveness towards life being treated in a segregative way? For the sake of keeping up the notion of taxonomical richness? Definitely not for nonhuman life itself.

Antispeciesist Animal Sociology

Thoughts about Animal Languages


Thoughts about the Languages of Animals

Palang Latif

This text is also part of the Edition Farangis: Animal Autonomy E-Reader 1.

I can’t see how a term such as ‘animal language’ could pose a problem to anybody when it directly refers to an animal’s way of communication. I am however critical of people who ‘translate’ animals in stereotype ways.

Nevertheless I could apologize for using a word that describes the phenomenon that humans see as exactly the very one criterion which most sharply shows the difference between humans and all other animals. The word ‘language’ has evolved in the human mind and possesses as such its linguistic legitimacy.

The word ‘language’ belongs to one of the core conceptions of the most drastic forms of negative speciesism. Regarding this presumed ground I have to stand upon, I apologize for the insufficience of my attempt to communicate something for which I can insofar only borrow this word, and I dare to ask you to perhaps think of a second word ‘language’ – free of value in a sense – which would only describe what we may not be able to describe yet within the borders of our set of regulations as we have them currently in regards to language; I am well aware that people usually don’t want to accept that this one human term ‘language’ can be used tightly paralleled to animal language, and that so far the word ‘animal language’ has only be tolerated on a scientifical level to refer to human parameters that have been applied to animal communication.

Animals speak their languages, but what their languages consist of, could only be understood if we communicated with them on a level that allows them to use their language.

Animal languages work like human languages, where you can translate what you understand and try to put how-you-can-understand-the-message or that what you understand into your terms of your language.The same happens when I talk to any other individual: I comprehend what she/he/it conveys in the restrictedness or unrestrictedness of my own terms. My terms don’t merely underly semantics – though they might be translated back and forth into semantics, morphems and syntax. My own terms and concepts have, in spite of their belonging to my system of language, a restricted meaning. In a very basic sense I have to rely on that what I understand or confer to that what I perceive.

The languages of animals (there are more animal languages than human languages of course) are seen by us as having a super restricted meaning. If we take the position of the nonhuman side in general, we can say though that human languages are restricted in that they only apply to humans. And seen from a standpoint which takes into account the question of perspective, I can say that if I don’t understand a dog, it’s because she belongs to a different animal ‘group’ when compared to my human group.

‘Communication’ infers meaning to the act of communicating on any level of any sound produced by a communicative agent.

Does language necessarily have to be connected to the history, the past, the present and the future of human progress? Why should animals have ever evolutionary or in any wise chosen to contextualize their existence with the human existence? A being of an animal group or I’d like to say an animal culture, clearly differenciates that what is important to their own existence; and I would call this rather their philosophy instead of just an evolutionary occurence.

I find it permissible to use a word of the human language to describe something I witness, on an experiential basis, about the side of someone (animals) who uses another language. Also ,I prefer to call the expresssed existence of nonhuman animals a philosphy, since it is too simple and anthropocentrically self-serving to underlie animal existence pure evolutionary ends. I do draw from my personal observations which seem sufficient for me to make my own judgements in this case and to make a decision about what to think here.

Basically I think that everybody knows that animals have their languages, but that we usually deny that these languages, that we don’t understand, have any meaning at all. But how would we not deny any meaning of animal communication that would go beyond the notions that our societies generally have about even the being itself of animals; we deny the fact of a self-authorative being of animals in itself in it’s whole meaning. So, no surprise that we draw major qualitative lines. In terms of language, we create a complicated building of restrictions to exclude the nonhuman animals from the comparatively tolerant perspectives that we have in regards to the pluralism of human languages. (It’s ok for a human language to be completely different, just because it’s human.)

We deny another animal that it’s not instinctal, because it’s not a human. You can indeed call everything an instict. Still you can’t really prove that it is “instict”. You can just put the ‘supposed carrier of an instict’ in a setting where they are treated as such instinctual things and seen as such, and interpreted as such.

Possibilities

Human rights in favour of animal rights may hopefully be another way to convey that an opinion of a human majority can’t represent a truth about any individual animal and the whole animal groups:The animal individual itself is a truth-bearer since it exists, and simply by that it represents, through how it lives (in its own rights and in its own terms) a truth. Just like I judge humans I meet by the impact of truth (their actions are possible just by shere existence), I would want to be as just as I can towards the ways in which individual animals live.
Art doesn’t function through semantics, since there are shapes and colours!
Micky Mouse doesn’t function through semantics, since there are figures and action!
Snowball doesn’t function through semantics, since there is Lisa taking her seriously enough!
Music doesn’t function through semantics, since there is play and composition!
Oppression doesn’t function through semantics, since there are suppressors
Love doesn’t funtion through semantics, since there is understanding and misunderstanding
Peace doesn’t funtion through semantics, since there are underlying actions … And this array could go on and on. Anyway, and still this is all part of our language?

What we do when we speak about ‘animals’ and ‘language’ is: We reduce the complexity of animal communication to linguitstical terms into which they may not fit. Instead of admitting the existence and relevance of other communicative systems as being really independent from our systems and thus not explainable through purely and solely biologcal criteria (insinct).

I have compounded two things:

1. the function of the term ‘instinct’ as a) serving to restrict the notion of a socio-ethical plane as to only having developed in and being attributable to humans and ‘human groups/cultures’ and b) its intended reduction of the scope and meaning of communication in nonhuman animals to a biologically explainable and manipulatively determinable code,

and 2. I have defined linguistics as an inadequate means of setting general rules for a communicative validity.

Instincts and linguistics are things that are working in our systems of categorisation.

In regards to the self-cetegorization going along with this, I also want to point out that our own language does not base a) on merely a functional basis neither in connection to the agent that uses language nor in connection with the subjects that language seeks to deal with, and b) that our language might also not just be a compound of what linguistics (and maybe physiological aspects of speaking added or so) alone can make out of it.

Generally: Cultural (in a non-homocentric sense, i.e. implying “the natural” on an equal scale)) and individual aspects play a role too, as well with humans as with animals when communicating!

I do state again that the word culture can to my opinion also be applied to animals – if one allows a culture to be really and profoundly different [from “our” cultures] too.


The Image on top is from the illustrated story “Morgh va Tokhm” by Farangis G. Yegane.

This essay ist also on my veganswines.com site at: http://www.veganswines.com/andishe/animallanguage.htm and published in my veganswines reader 08 (Paddling of the Ducks educational press) in a printed form.

See also: The species-derogative ascription of instinct, http://www.simorgh.de/objects/the-species-derogative-ascription-of-instinct/

Ecosocial bonding

Most nonhuman animals face the threat of being potentially defined as “meat” or otherwise as any kind of “usable source” made from their bodies. Inseparably their agency and in fact all aspects of their lives are systematically being reductively objectified.

The nonhuman animal body is categorically oppressed in a form of exploitable objectification, which implies the permanent imminent danger of > being subdued to unbearable emotional and physical pain and of > being subdued to the most complete possible form of negation of the individual selfness of the victim.

The dominating human societal constructs function with an inbuilt demand for systemic violence and destruction towards animality.

A change of this zoocidal system is an ongoing struggle on all kinds of planes and here we find the reason of ecosocial bonding and understanding.

Gruppe Messel, Tierautonomie

Nonhumanity and reasons for solidarity (fragment)

Nonhumanity and reasons for solidarity (fragment)

This text as a PDF

Building relations between being “human” and animality and standing in social context with nonhuman animals:

  • I am non-hierarchical outside the “human” box …
  • My frame of ethical reference is only cross-secting “humanity” …
  • I consider my being human as co-integrative with nonhumanity …
  • My being human is standing in nonbiological terms. It is social and mutually philosophical.

Nonhuman and other-than-human principles frame new philosophies: philosophies that we can comprehend and which are outside of – or cross-secting the human scope. Look at non-hierarchical social life for instance in social systems of birds, reptiles, canidae … nonhuman animal groups, seen of course from a non-biologistical standpoint. In the context of getting to learn about other-than-human ethical-sociologies and eco-sociologies we can unsolidarize with oppressive human positions and solidarize with the entire nonhuman and other-than-human social systems as major, primary frames of reference.

Antispeciesist Animal Sociology

Nonhuman morality relevancy



Altruism is often self-serving. Also caring for one another is like caring for oneself – unless someone is egotistical. The lines drawn in altruism just seem too sharp … Nonhumans morally act more altruistic than we humans do, one seriously has to admit. We believe such factors should be highlighted in the Animal Rights discourse, since making this invisible means making agency and social architectures invisible.
Gruppe Messel, Tierautonomie / Animal Autonomy

Speciesist narcissism

In context with my fragment: Many forms of speciesism.

Speciesist narcissism

A question of identity (human vs. animal) –
in which a human hides his/her factual individuality (i.e. human collectivism as a shield)
beneath the psychological and/or physical violence against animal dignity.

Fragments on species-derogation, previous list: Speciesism an animal hatred.

Aspects in the deconstruction of speciesism

Aspects in the deconstruction of speciesism

This fragment as a PDF

Speciesism > …

  • is not something categorically unintentional, even if automatized in peoples thinking for a large part
  • is embedded in human history (cultures/traditions), it did not come overnight
  • has many forms and problematic facets
  • is interconnected

If we look at the foundations of such a phenomenon of species hierarchy (i.e. speciesism), we can see that their fallacies can be dismantled, and that we ought to try to do that.

What does speciesism base upon? (foundations)

Different key aspect of speciesism lay in our perspectives and epistemologies coming from angles of Religion / Spirituality, Rationality / Science, Philosophy, Culture / Civilization, Individuality / Society. In other words the same factors that influence our outlooks on other humans and ‘nature’/the natural world, are influencing factors of speciesism. The conflicts stemming from systems that underlie our (world-)views are comprehensive, speciesism however is an expression of the fallacies of such systems.

Image: Farangis G. Yegane

Gruppe Messel / Tierautonomie, Animal Autonomy 06.11.2018. Specifics of speciesism.

Female-identified human individuals and species-derogation

Female-identified human individuals and speciesism, species-derogation, -negation -annihilation or the overlooked problem of “women” and anthropocentric-collectivist speciesism

Palang LY

This text as a PDF

A.) I set forth following anchor points, before I start on the topic:

  • We can ask if the interpretations of the characteristics, that are considered to make up the marking dividers within a human-animal hierarchy, are in reality a negation of the autonomous value of otherness in nonhuman animals.
  • We know that the single criterion [against which we measure anything nonhuman animals do] that serves as our standard, is the human parameter, i.e. the human model counts as the ideal, as the standard, for creating norms. So what happens if we put this standard of measurement into doubt?
  • Biology has already determined what the identity of nonhuman animals is, and even the Animal Rights movement has satisfied itself with placing the moral question somewhere out of reach by accepting the explanation of the identity of animals as something strictly biological.

(Full text: http://www.simorgh.de/objects/what-is-an-animal/)

Source: unknown.

The image is severely speciesist. It’s not fathomable why some feminists make that comparison between the “treatment” or I guess rather the objectification of women in advertisement etc. with “meat”? There is obviously an perverted aesthetical connection thought by speciesist rhetorics, but it leads us into a direction which should be further looked at and not just taken by the superficial “meaning” of such iconography.

“Meat” is a solely speciesist problem, unless we would speak of necrophilia and cannibalism.

B.) Feminism and Animal Rights: the one way or the other

“Meat” is not porn and it’s not sexist per se, it is porn insofar and forms of zoophilia are involved, direct or indirect, and sexist where sexism is directly applied to the nonhuman animal individuals or groups themselves. Speaking of porn and sexism here as a proxy covers up how those affect nonhumans directly.

“Meat” is flesh, and it’s the result of a human/humans killing a nonhuman animal/animals.

We should be careful with attaching own sociological issues to such a major own concerns such as Animal Rights in an analogy, which sets itself so close to the subject of comparison, that the story lapses and gets one-sided and a new and important perspective gets neglected instantaneously.

All Animal Rights issues need an own valid terminology and frames of reference, otherwise we are risking to blur the lines of differentiation.

The analogy of sexism and speciesism fails when applied superficially and in an undifferentiated way also because…:

Two main points why Animal Rights issues can’t be tied to a strict feminist viewpoint, as long as feminism is used as excusing women from the ethical responsibilities in society towards their nonhuman environment.

  • It’s wrong to presuppose that speciesism is something that is more prevalent in male-identified human individuals compared to female-identified human individuals.
  • Also, male nonhuman animals are inasmuch sexually abused, e.g. in the farm industry (their reproductive system) such as female nonhuman animals are.

The sociological dynamics of gender in their effect of speciesist attitudes and actions should be addressed of course, but there is no reason inherent to “biological” gender (if we would go that path) that would prove that “men” or categorically more speciesist than “women”. Also the way in which roleplay is happening in systems of oppression should be addressed, i.e. “women” taking the role of cooks, or preparing the speciesist meals, of wearing feathers and fur, etc. male roles, roles that are swapped, (I am not extending on this here).

C.) Close analogies … also of genocides and speciecides and their deficits

These types of close analogies in the field of -isms and abuse work in a valid way when we look at the psychology of the perpetrator who seeks to create a victim: the aspect of exerted violence shares many similarities, whereas however on the side of the victimized we have to see the contexts: political, enviro-political, historical, sociological, … a group or an individual gets picked as a victim for reasons, and those exact reasons need to be analyzed under own terms, and not be conflated. In terms of speciesism, we face many forms of speciesism (i.e. religious, scientific, legal, philosophical, etc.).

D.) Feminism, Speciesism, Anthropocentrism

Random examples of female rhetorics of speciesism:

Is a self-critical view on gender / being a woman / feminism necessary?

What would speak against it? We know that in our daily lives we, as “women”, make decisions that touch on core grounds that turn the private/the personal into the political (https://userpages.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/pisp.html). As antispeciesists we know with our vegan praxis just how impactful our personal choices are, and as social beings we also know how hard it can be for us to draw a line between the social expectations that one tries to fit in (in order to find a job, to be liked or accepted, to keep ones social ties or family structures/felt obligations together, and so forth) and our political ideals and ethical, pressing necessities when both might stand in conflict with each other in times of societal change. Our human social environment might be heavily speciesist and we have to get along with it, somehow yet still inspire change, for instance.

Speciesism, as remote as it seems, is to be found at the same point where my-choice-to-decide-otherwise-or-not crosses just any implications of socialization that I feel are ethically unjustifiable. When I rant against sexism I might as well rant against an injustice that targets nonhumans, if I am a vegan anti-speciesist minded person.

Speciesism can be understood to work socially as an ideology, where people who are convinced of their degrading stance, believe in a collectively held fiction that is assumed and agreed upon as “objectivity”, so that no rebuttal can take place on “rational grounds”.

Women do feel at home in this construct inasmuch as men do, on the large scale. Both 50 percent of humanity, male and female, believe so much in human superiority that they are willing to constitute part of a speciesist society by fulfilling their individual part in the fiction.

“Gender” defines itself from interaction within a group or society. Being oppressed as a woman doesn’t automatically mean that you can’t be oppressive towards nonhuman animals. Drawing an analogy between sexism (or genderism) and speciesism does not take account of the different reasons and histories why the victim gets oppressed in the first place – for what ends, and how exactly. If we turn a blind eye on the gender specific functions of speciesism and anthropocentrism we might risk a loophole in our argumentation for our own rights defending nonhumans and for integral Animal Rights themselves.

Speciesism is a unique tragedy. The history of being classified as “animals” by humans, with all that entailed, as beings whose existence had been on earth eons before humans evolved, can’t be compared to any other form of oppression by a strict analogy. Being objectified as solely “animate”, being slaughterable, edible, huntable, vivisectable, being objectifiable and judged as “definable”, in the first place constitutes a specific situation for the affected subject, and hints at a unique technique of injustice taking place here on behalf of the oppressive side that is being applied to this particular victimized group.

Comparisons between different forms of oppression are extensively helpless efforts when oppressor and oppressed are as entangled as in the case of speciesist human oppressive settings.

We could straightforwardly name that natural sciences, religion, philosophy, mass society have to end classifying the beings we call “nonhuman animals”, or we stay stuck in our psychological accompliceship with the very hierarchical and oppressive systems that we criticize so vehemently as what regards our own pains.

I don’t see an alternative as of yet. The ecofeminist and feminist discourse in Animal Rights and Animal Liberation (Karen Davis, Marti Kheel, Lori Gruen, Carol J. Adams, Kim Socha, Vasile Stanescu and so forth) is pluralistic enough to lead and continue their differentiated discourse I believe and I thank them for doing so.

Farangis G. Yegane. Panting: Torsi, Drawing: Werkzyklus Krone der Schöpfung, http://crownofthecreation.farangis.de/

All links accessed 28.10.2018.

Conscious fallacies, biological causalism


Fellow activists:

For once stop reproducing species-derogative rhetorics by talking about “instincts/instinctual behavior” when speaking about nonhuman animal friends that you seek to defend from reductive approaches towards them. Start developing an emancipated language, an antispeciesist one, in the sense of acknowledging the uniqueness of the individuals you want to talk about.
It’s central to make connections between the categorical trinaries and specific constructs of “animality”, the ‘natural’ word/’nature, and “humanity”, and how those ”further” and reach into sociology, into notions and ideas of liberty, into political environmentalism as a main binding core, … add your own knowledge and insights.
It’s fully insufficient and seems a conscious fallacy to refer to one (problematic) category, that reduces the entity of a nonhuman individual being to the inquisitional restrictions of biological causalism.

Gruppe Messel, Tierautonomie / Animal Autonomy