babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
How about a forum dealing with animal welfare/rights?
May 13, 2010 - 8:45pm
I'm sure it would have a decent amount of interest.
I never know where to look for such issues? Should I look under environment, or should I look under the region where it happened?
It would be good if it had its own forum
How about you teach them how to type first, then we can let them have their own forum.
I would think environmental justice could handle those topics, as our relationship to other species reflects--in fact, is--our relationship to our "environment".
Possibly also body and soul.
I have my doubts about whether babble could "do" an animal rights forum, honestly. Because animal rights (as opposed to "welfare") are pretty much off the radar on the left. And doing animal rights on an online forum using an anti-oppression framework requires that there be enough consciousness and buy-in. I have my doubts that babble has that.
Doesn't mean it's not worth trying. Heck, anything is worth trying. But I would predict a battle like you've never seen before or since if people who are really into animal rights (and I mean RIGHTS, not "aww, look at the cute little kitty in the shelter, poor thing") and into real anti-oppression work for animals, were to demand an oppression-free safe space to discuss animal liberation issues. Animal rights is not only something the left doesn't do well, but there isn't even consensus on the left that it SHOULD do it well, the way there is for other anti-oppression movements/philosophies.
There is a whole lot more to animal rights or animal liberation politics than what can simply be contained by "environment" or "body and soul".
I agree with Michelle. I relate it to environment because, again, how we relate to other species is a reflection of how we relate to the rest of the natural environment. It's all related to this notion of human primacy (?) (supremacy?).
I suppose the other option would be to create a forum and let the chips fall as they fall. I can certainly see the merit in, say, having an AR forum that is necessarily anti-racist so that POC can feel safe posting there. But animals can't read babble, and so I can't imagine some chicken feeling unsafe here.
Too many different bloody forums as it is for the amount of traffic on the site.
The AR forum isn't necessarily anti-racist just "so that people of colour can feel safe posting here."
And if it was, it would be a massive failure.
I agree with what Michelle said at post #3
Fair enough. Certainly it would be hard to be progressive and not be anti-racist. I don't know if the same can really be said of drinking milk or wearing leather.
Maybe that's just agreement with you that "we're not there yet", but I'll be honest, I'm not really trying to be there yet either, and I expect that a lot of meat eating, pet "owning" members probably aren't either. I wouldn't be super interested in a forum that presupposes that I should be, or should want to be.
I'm thinking, BTW, of animal "rights" more than "welfare". I expect we all believe that animals should be treated humanely, but more than that and I think the jury's still out.
Well, it wouldn't necessarily be an issue if people were merely "not super interested in a forum that presupposes you should be" into animal rights or liberation. They could just avoid the threads in that forum.
The issue would be if those people refused to respect the mandate of the forum and trolled it with argumentative, mocking, or defensive posts. And I think there would be a whole lot of that.
But it kind of sounds like the forum would have already reached a conclusion in the debate (specifically: animals DO have "rights"). Why, given that there's nothing even slightly approaching consensus on that, would the forum begin with that as a mandate?
Why not have an open forum, where debate can happen? I'm not seeing the downside here. A lot of meat eaters having their beliefs challenged and a lot of animal rights proponents having theirs challenged doesn't sound like a bad thing, to me.
I don't think an animal welfare forum needs to be a protected space. It just needs to be the place where posts related to animals are gathered.
Unlike a woman or gay forum, there is no person who is going to identify that way, and feel personally attacked.
Personally, I'd welcome differing opinions, as long as they are somewhat respectful.
I'm not up to speed on the concept of 'animal rights' so I did a quick Wiki.
Thanks for that Boom Boom - I wasn't up to speed either. For the record, I am working my way towards animal rights in that I don't eat or drink any animal products at all anymore, and I don't buy anything made from animals (leather etc). But I still have my old stuff, leather boots and coats and things, and I still own dogs and cats and whatever else takes up residence in my yard. So I could totally get into an animal forum, and would sit there precariously on the fence.
Yep, I can definitely see myself doing exactly that -- at least the argumentative and mocking parts of it. I think the defensiveness would be on the part of those who want to assert that animals have "rights" without first convincing people like me that animals are "moral actors". Short of rewriting the basic principals governing participation here to say something along the lines of "we assert that animals are moral actors with concomitant rights, and that babble is not the place to challenge this orthodoxy" people like me are going to challenge those who make such an assertion.
If others want to see discussions around the responsibilities humans have towards animals, and enter into debate about how human activities should be modified or regulated so that these responsibilities are addressed, I am 99% of the way there and would be more than happy to participate in these discussions - and without being either argumentative or mocking. I think there is a lot of a room for fruitful discourse on how best to ensure that our responsibilities towards animals are met, and that it is an important issue to be discussed, but the devil is in the details - and the terminology is definitely one of the troublesome details.
A bit confused as to what a moral actor is?
Roar. Chirp.
Seriously though, I don't think we need a whole forum but if we can agree on including those issues in a forum, that would do for now. Woof.
Polly, please check your inbox... I had a few minutes to put together a quick response and I hope you find it, if not sufficient, at least intelligible.
I would like to challenge the implied assertion that being a "moral actor" is a necessary condition of "having rights". I will not, however, mock you.
How about a forum about "Welfare Rights" period. I seem to remember that there was some discussion about having one because "Labour and Consumption" does not cover the massive numbers of urban poor in our society, or so it was posed. However, people felt that such discussion could go on in "Labour and Consumption" and the idea was dropped.
So. My opionion is that I would put having a "Poverty and Welfare Rights" as a forum, before a forum on Animal Welfare/Rights.
Just a small quibble Cueball, although I think your are paraphrasing someone elses arguments and not making your own, so it might be innapropriate. If so I apologize. Anyway- there are also very large numbers of rural poor too. It is often more hidden - but homelessness and desperate poverty are not urban issues. In relative terms sure there are more urban poor than rural poor - but many of the root causes are the same, although there are some significant differences too.
Before the recession hit - the largest growth in food bank usage in Ontario for instance, during the early part of the 'naughts' was occuring in parts of rural Ontario.
Anyway sorry for the thread drift, but as someone who has been involved in rural anti-poverty work for a very long time it is one of those things that I notice.
Sure. Rural poor as well.
I normally wouldn't direct traffic to other forums, but it's abundantly clear from this thread that babble will never be a place for people who feel passionately about animal rights to post about it without being mocked and derided.
The Vegan Freak forums are excellent (and so is their podcast) if you're interested in discussing animal liberation with others. And it's a closed forum for a reason - they don't want ignorant, disrespectful stuff posted on their forum. Starting an animal liberation forum on babble would be like starting an anti-racism forum on Free Dominion - you'd probably get the same level of ignorance of the basics.
Well until post 24 I was going to say Michelle I thought people were being fairly respectful, if not agreeable. But then I finished the thread -thus far- and said -nope Michelle wins.
Personally while I would never be tempted to post in such a forum I wouldn't object to anyone who shares those beliefs discussing the issues from their perspectives in a safeish area. Just as long as I am not expected to agree with the perspective if it spills over into other areas of babble.
I can't promise I won't mock- but I can promise I won't mock animal rights activits anymore than anyone else I might be tempted to mock and as I creep ever onward into decrepitude that list seems to get longer not shorter.
Hey is that self mockery?
You're probably right Michelle. And I love VeganFreaks.
RosaL - have at it. While a social contract construction of rights is the one that makes the most sense to me, with its necessary precondition that other parties to the contract be moral actors, I am quite willing to seriously consider an alternate formulation. That I have not, to this point in time, encountered one that I consider as accurate as the social contract construction does not mean that such a construction doesn't or can't exist. So in all seriousness, if you have a general theory of rights that I might not be familiar with, please post them. On a slightly less serious note, I am an all-growed up bagkitty, and I can withstand a little mockery.
I'm not sure, but I think that animal welfare, animal rights and animal liberation are all a little bit different. Perhaps different points on a scale, but pretty different. I think, for example, you can be someone who advocates for animal welfare without being vegan or vegetarian. Temple Grandin's work comes to mind.
Interesting that the progressives don't seem to include animals in their scope of compassion.
Sad to see the only one speaking up for animals at the OSPCA fiasco is a Conservative.
Actually, I don't believe in rights at all
But I am still willing to discuss it and I wonder in what sense a "rights theory" can be accurate? What does accuracy mean in such a case and how is it assessed? Maybe we should start a new thread though if we're going to talk about this.