Compartmentalizing Compassion

Advocates for human abuse victims should recognize that animal abuse is related to their priorities.

Compassionate people who support social justice ought to be concerned about abuse in all forms. Yet, many prioritize the suffering of one group over that of another, and rather than expressing solidarity with other progressive causes, attack those they should befriend.

This is especially true when the victims of abuse are nonhuman animals. When people rallied outside a Windsor courthouse last week to call for justice in the case of Tyson – a dog who suffered such extreme mutilation that he had to be euthanized – some social advocacy groups jumped in to criticize them. According to the National Post, John Swales, a Windsor-based victims’ advocate and support services advisor, perceived “a dismal reflection of society when an animal receives more concern than a child," while Lee Lakeman, from the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres in Vancouver, complained that demanding justice for Tyson "dumbs down the word justice," and Marcelo Gomez-Wiuckstern of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies said, "When you see people protesting so hard for the rights of animals it does make you ask: what are you doing for the rights of children?"

This is a familiar refrain to anyone concerned about animal rights or welfare. These statements are almost always made in bad faith, as efforts to deflect compassion and reassert speciesist attitudes that render the lives of animals valueless. One would never hear such questions raised in other contexts: why are you concerned about women being raped in Congo when women are being raped in Afghanistan? Why are you an AIDS activist when so many people are homeless? Why are you supporting that food bank instead of opposing nuclear weapons?

It is striking that individuals such as Gomez-Wiuckstern do not direct their complaints to those who spend their time shopping, attending art exhibitions, or watching sports on television.

In fact, it is completely untrue that “an animal receives more concern than a child” in Canadian society. Most obviously, we do not operate factory farms in which we raise children for slaughter. Nor do we skin them so that we can make them into clothing or use them in biomedical experiments. Many more resources and far more social advocacy groups are devoted to human problems than to the plight of animals. Even in the case of those animals we designate as pets, Canada’s existing animal cruelty laws are antiquated and inadequate and lag behind legislation that exists in many other countries.

Rather than compartmentalizing compassion and regarding activism as a zero-sum game, those who advocate on behalf of abused children and women should recognize that the abuse of animals is directly related to their own priorities.

Many sociologists have written about the connections between animal abuse and violence towards humans. In England, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the RSPCA have jointly organized conferences to investigate coordinated approaches to address abuse, recognizing that those who abuse animals are also likely to abuse people. The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association notes an “indisputable link” between animal abuse and family violence and cites a “landmark” 1983 study that found that in 88 per cent of families in which children were abused, animal abuse was also present. Carol J. Adams’ important book The Sexual Politics of Meat examines how the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of women are thoroughly interwoven. The evidence for these connections is overwhelming. It is shocking that those who claim to be the advocates for abused children and women should show so little awareness of these issues and so little compassion for other beings who are victimized.