PETA’s Anti-Feminism

For many years I have been passionate about animal rights issues.

However, as I grew up, I have realized that most animal rights activists’ tactics are really not that efficient when it comes to saving animals, and in fact they are harmful to people.

I am sure many of you are familiar with PETA. While there will be people who support this organization, I, personally, try to avoid it at any cost. I have my reasons for it.

I simply can’t justify supporting an animal rights organization which goal is to scare, guilt, or seduce people into either donating to it or adopting its views.

In recent years, I also became severely disturbed by PETA’s advertisement tactics. (Don’t get me wrong, not all of them are equally bad, but there are a few campaigns that need to be named and shamed.)

Let’s start with PETA “Naked Campaign”. The campaign that features young, model-looking half naked or fully naked women who are paid to promote various animal rights causes.

Can you spot a problem with that? I certainly can…Firstly, most of the girls protesting are not volunteers. They get paid for posing naked and advocating animal rights issues. This is wrong. How can you truly be an advocate for something you don’t really care about?

But the issue runs much deeper than that. What PETA is truly doing is it’s objectifying and sexualizing women’s bodies to grab headlines.

While it seems perfectly normal to animal rights activists, in fact it’s quite offensive to women, especially feminists worldwide. And it’s not just PETA that is “saving” animals at the expense of people’s sanity.

Back in 2008, a popular animal-friendly cosmetics retailer Lush launched its worldwide campaign that urged young people to get involved in a naked march. The ultimate aim was to hand out as many leaflets as possible on sustainability issues and reduced packaging.

The biggest hypocrisy was the fact that paper leaflets were completely counter-intuitive to reducing waste and in fact many lush products were not as environmentally friendly as they were portrayed to be.

What’s even worse is that around the same time the brand launched a campaign to end animal testing which featured young, attractive female actors getting themselves exposed to violence and humiliation.

I am sorry, but I can’t justify such actions in a world where misogyny, violence and sexualization continues to thrive. Quite contrary, I believe that the normalization of violence should be a cause for our concern.

Sadly, there are now countless campaigns where PETA has used women’s physique to get its message across. For all wrong reasons. Let’s stop and think about it for a second…

Surely, a picture of a naked women will get people’s attention, but will it actually make people do what PETA wants them to do? I don’t think so.

I also don’t think many women would like to feel like a sex object, because the real issue is not naked bodies. It’s the way PETA portrays them.

So, PETA, if you see yourself as an ethical and humane organization, start acting humanely not only towards animals, but towards humans too.

It’s time you reassess your values and promote compassion not exploitation.