Kim Stallwood

One very cold morning in the winter of 1975 I heard trees scream as I set them alight.

After I abandoned my career in the food service industry, I worked as a labourer in a commercial tree nursery. I did not know which direction my life and my concern for animals were taking me.

As I watched the flames engulf the pile of trees I built, I heard a scream which was like no other sound I had ever heard before or since. There is, most likely, a scientific reason why the trees screamed. Perhaps it was to do with the tree sap burning on that cold morning. Regardless, I heard trees scream as they burned. Their cries forced me to ask myself if they were alive. Was I responsible for their murder? Even though, rationally, I knew that this was impossible. Even ridiculous. Trees may be living things but they are not sentient beings. Nevertheless, it was a profound experience that continues to haunt me. It was a personal transformative moment in my relationship with violence.

I have always opposed war and military action of any kind. They demonstrate human failure in diplomacy and our inability to live with each other compassionately, honestly and peacefully. I understand the case made for ‘just’ wars but I wonder how many were truly so. A just war is when military action is permissible with legal or moral reasons, including self-defence and assisting another. As with society so with the individual. The only morally acceptable violent behaviour for an individual is to act, including in self-defence, when no other options are available.

Burning a pile of trees is one of the very few occasions when I behaved violently. Although I did not think so at first. In my defence, I make the case that I would not have set the trees alight if I had not been told to do so. I am not a pyromaniac. The reason why I did not challenge my supervisor is because I saw nothing wrong with burning trees. My mind changed, however, when I heard the trees scream. Was I behaving violently, I wondered, by setting a stack of trees on fire?

Trees are objects. Yes, they grow and, in that sense, they are alive. But they are not subjects like humans. They do not suffer as we do. Any noise they make when they burn is no more than like the chiming of a clock. Screaming trees burning in a fire does not mean they are sentient. Yes, I like trees. My appreciation is because of their beauty, evocation and necessity. I am pleased to see in certain situations trees are protected by law. But they are not sentient like us. We grow trees. We cut them down. We use their wood. Trees are a crop, like other plants we grow and use and, in some cases, eat.

My anecdote about burning trees may appear ridiculous to some. It may resonate with others who experienced something similar. Regardless, it reminds me to be thoughtful (I admit to not being always successful) of how I handle all plants, including those I grow and harvest at the allotment I share near my home. Further, I appreciate particularly the majestic beauty of the wooded East Sussex countryside since I moved there to live in 2007. Certainly, I would not want to see any of it destroyed by fire.

Thinking about trees reminds me of two silly arguments I have encountered over the years when I have made the case for animal rights.

First, there is no point in worrying about animals because it leads to anxiety about whether plants feel pain. Second, what is the point in worrying about animals when plants also feel pain? On both counts, it is better to take no action. This is hypocritical nonsense and beyond any reason but needs to be considered briefly.

When I recall my thoughts and emotions about the burning trees, I feel guilty, distressed and confused. What if the trees I burnt did fee pain? Is not my assumption that trees are insensate akin to what people say about animals? That animals and trees do not have the capacity to feel and if they do it does not matter. Does all this somehow make animals and trees less important and more permissible to harm? Further, if we are to stop worrying about it, well, where would it lead us?

I do not know whether trees and other flora experience pain and capable of suffering. There is no evidence of a central nervous system to indicate such an ability. This does not mean, however, that we have licence to do whatever we want with the environment. The way I distinguish how I feel about animals and the environment, including trees, plants and all other flora, is that I give the former the benefit of the doubt as they are clearly sentient whereas the latter has the potential for sentiency. I believe we can use the environment but that this must be done in conjunction with my four key values of compassion, truth, nonviolence and an awareness and sensitivity to the interrelationships of the natural world.

Animal Rights Zone (ARZone) is an important and serious resource for people committed to making a difference for animals. It is outstanding project that I have recommended in the past and continue to do so. One of ARZone’s features is its podcasts in which the organisers and guests discuss philosophy, strategy, history and much more about animal rights and the animal rights movement. Previous guests include political scientist Robert Garner, vegan author Will Tuttle, sociologist David Nibert and campaigners Sharon Nunez, Katrina Fox and Lynne Yates.

Recently, ARZone invited me to be a guest in their podcast series. The recording was arranged to take place at 10pm on a Sunday evening. Not the best day and time for me! But the only time available given those involved live in the UK, Ireland, the United States and Australia. So, it had to be convenient for everyone involved. Praise the Lord for Skype!

The ARZone folks you will hear in this podcast include Carolyn Bailey, Barbara DeGrande, Tim Gier, Ronnie Lee and Roger Yates. Ronnie and Roger are old friends and colleagues of mine. Please forgive the silly banter between us.

Anyway, my podcast on ARZone is published here and I invite you to take the time out to listen to it. I need to tell you though it is a two-hour conversation! So, you will need, at least, a pot of tea or coffee beside you and some vegan sandwiches or biscuits. Here’s a list of some of the topics we discussed in no particular order:

• Vegan campaigning
• Political organising for animals
• Vegan public educational campaigns vs. political animal rights campaigns
• The radicalisation of British animal welfare organisations in the 1980s, including the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
• The cultural history of veganism from post-World War Two stoic asceticism to current trends in urban vegan chic
• A sense of community among animal rights people or lack of
• Personal transformative moments, including mine
• The importance of studying other social movements
• Why are there not more vegans today?
• Why ‘animal lovers’ are a potential source of animal rights supporters
• How I got involved with animal rights, including working in a chicken slaughterhouse
• The European Union ban on the battery cage
• Steve Wise and his legal strategy
• Are vegans special people?
• Why meat, eggs and dairy are the new tobacco
• Traps to avoid and not let yourself fall into, including psychological trauma
• Is the British animal welfare/rights movement making progress?
• Buddhism and animal rights
• The Hastings Vegan Dining Club
• Professionalising the animal advocate
• Animal rights 75 years from now
• And why I’m guardedly optimistic……..

But be prepared for the odd outbreak of cheap, vulgar British humour!

The good folks at Our Hen House have produced an excellent short film about Sue Coe. Sue describes herself as an artist whose work is reportage. To learn more about her work, go here and here.

Sue Coe: Art of the Animal from Our Hen House on Vimeo.

My first recollection of Sue Coe’s work was during the turbulent Thatcher years of the 1980s, which we appear to be reliving under the present Tory-led coalition government. I recall seeing copies of her ‘How to commit suicide in South Africa’ for sale in Compendium, the Camden Town independent, leftie bookshop beloved but now lost. Then, Sue received controversial coverage in the media for her drawings of the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. I did not catch up with her work until I had moved to the USA and saw the exhibit, Porkopolis, in Washington, DC in the late 1980s or early 1990s. I wrote to her then as PETA’s Executive Director expressing admiration for her work and offering any assistance I could. Many years later, I went along to hear her speak in Baltimore when she was a guest lecturer at the local art institute. Her talk was like a breath of fresh air with all its insights, controversies and humour. Afterwards, I introduced myself and we went for coffee. Since then, we’ve become friends and colleagues.

She is the most important living artist in our time. The craft in her work is truly amazing. There is, also, a subtle cleverness in her referencing to the artists and their work that inspires her. I am proud of the fact that Sue was a regular in The Animals’ Agenda magazine I used to publish.

In the film, Sue describes herself as a worm turning over the soil reporting on the world she sees. I like to think of her more as someone who holds up a mirror to society challenging us to consider our stupid ways. But, in doing so, it is done with such an uncompromising vision that is remarkable if disturbingly beautiful.

We’re all the better for seeing the world through Sue Coe’s eyes.

The Animal Equality inspiring protest in Puerta del Sol, Madrid.

The Spanish animal rights organisation, Igualdad Animal (Animal Equality), bring attention to animal exploitation with a dramatic protest on International Day for Animal Rights on December 10.

Four hundred activists from several countries each hold in their hands carcasses of farmed animals (e.g., chickens, pigs, lambs) although one is holding the body of a dog. The protestors stand silently in the organisation’s t-shirts in ordered rows.

The image of the supplicating protestors asks us to see how we treat animals but also there is a sense of forgiveness about what we do to them. The protestors hold out the dead animals in supplication demanding the viewer to see the responsibility of our actions. We are not made to feel guilty. Although we should. Nor are we confronted with self-righteous indignation, which is all too frequently the currency of the animal rights protest.

Instead, we are asked politely to stop, look and think. In doing so, we participate in the protest rather than passively observe it. There is a shared complicity with the protestors. No one is innocent. We are all responsible for animal exploitation. We must all act. We could be standing there, too, with dead animals lying in our outstretched arms. Most likely for many, they are standing there with dead animals in their shopping baskets.

Convocatoria 10 de Diciembre 2011 – Igualdad Animal / Animal Equality from IgualdadAnimal | AnimalEquality on Vimeo.

Compare and contrast the simple sophistication of this protest with those which are easy and unimaginative. Generally, they make their point at the expense of someone else, including body size, economic class, gender and race. There is no understanding, even recognition, of the intersection of oppressions. Instead, there is the excuse that ‘it’s for the animals’ which, somehow, magically makes possible any action permissible.

Of course, their objective is to make the link between our bodies and those of the animals we consume. After all, according to Darwin and today’s dominant culture of material science and evolution, we are all of us animals. Embodying animal protest with our bodies may make us feel that we are making the point, even becoming ‘one’ with the animals’ exploitation, and, surely these protests are successful in this regard. But I remain unconvinced as to the effectiveness of the message and what is trying to be said. All too often, it is all about manufacturing personal transformative moments when people recognise for the first time animal exploitation and start the journey down the path toward vegetarian, vegan, cruelty-free living. This is why the animal rights movement is more like an evangelist cause rather than a sophisticated political initiative treading the corridors of power.

One unexplored aspect is that with some of these actions there is unwittingly an implication that the animals would do to us (if they could) what we do to them. The ‘world turned upside down’ has a strong tradition in art and agitprop but its message must be used with care and respect. Otherwise, all too often, it becomes simply a gratuitous protest lacking any real meaning other than an invitation to voyeurism. Of course, we want to people to look and what are we inviting them to see? These intentionally sensationalist protests border on the pornographic. Attention is drawn to the people in the protest. The animals are absent. This is one reason why the Animal Equality protest is so powerful. The animals are far from absent. They are being held up respectfully for us to see. It is a simple evocation of how we treat animals. Further, it reminds me of the contrast between anonymous violent and illegal actions of some protestors with those who use open rescues as an open, nonviolent and turning upside down the legality of animal status to witness our instrumental use of animals. With the former, the people are the story. Whereas   in the latter, it is the animals, which is, of course, how it should be.

Igualdad Animal is to be congratulated for staging a moving and dignified indictment of our inhumanity to animals in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid.

ADDENDUM

Igualdad Animal released two additional films of the protest. Here they are:

International Animal Rights Day 2010 (Spain) from IgualdadAnimal | AnimalEquality on Vimeo.

Día Internacional de los Derechos Animales 2011 || Igualdad Animal from IgualdadAnimal | AnimalEquality on Vimeo.

Caroline Spelman, the UK coalition government’s Environment Minister, announced yesterday in the House of Commons that there will be two six week trials next year, in different parts of England. In this TV debate from Channel 4, Caroline Spelman and Mary Creagh MP, Shadow (Labour) Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, debate the issues. This short film is a good introduction to some of the key issues.

Friends and colleagues of Marti Kheel – Josephine Donovan, Batya Bauman, Lori Gruen and Carol Adams — have written a collective tribute in honour of the pioneering ecofeminist.

Marti’s ethic was one of active, engaged, empathetic care, not selfish or selfless care-taking. And while she was critical of many, her compassion always extended to them. She was a genuine philosopher, a lover of wisdom, of learning, and of debate. In true feminist form, her philosophical vision sought to challenge aspects of our common ways of thinking about ethics, even those that don’t immediately appear to emerge from masculinist assumptions. Since her earliest work, Marti’s scholarship drew on connections and brought out new possibilities for living more harmoniously with the movements of the natural world. Throughout her writing Marti advocated a nonviolent, emotionally responsive, holistic, and nondominative ethic by which humans may live in harmony with nature and nonhuman creatures.

I have known Peter Singer since the late 1970s and greatly admire and respect him. His influence on my understanding of animal ethics is significant. This does not mean to say that I agree with everything he says. Because I don’t. In truth, there isn’t anyone who I agree with completely, including myself!

Given my earlier post expressing my disappointment in Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, I was intrigued to read Peter’s review in The New York Times.

I’m not surprised Peter liked the book because Steven credits him as a major influence; however, I was surprised to read him say Steven has a

command of so much research, spread across so many different fields, is a masterly achievement.

Mmmmmmmmm….that may well be true but, sadly, it wasn’t true enough with respect to his research on Hitler and vegetarianism and the Third Reich and animal rights.

I would have liked to have seen Peter pick up Steven on this inaccuracy — even more so because he has written about his family’s escape from Nazi Germany and his grandparents death in concentration camps (See Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna).

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Whether you agree or not with the premise made in Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, it cannot but help to provoke a great deal of interest in anyone who thinks and cares deeply about the human condition. The significant amount of media attention given to the book suggests that we humans, as a species, have a strong need to understand (or wish to believe) that we, as a species, are making progress as moral beings.

Pinker thinks so. I would like to think so, too. But I am not so sure. He begins with this assertion in the Preface,

This book is about what may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history. Believe it or not — and I know that most people do not — violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence.

With already too many people following me around (read: books) like a phantom of the library, I am far from being in the position of reading, cover to cover, Pinker’s 700 plus page book. Nevertheless, I could not resist.

Since its arrival, I periodical find myself, when I have the spare time, to not read it from cover to cover but to dip into and out of it as the moment takes me. Of course, I would like to read it from the beginning to the end. That is not likely for the time being. Further, it is a book that I think I should study as there is a lot of material in it of interest and relevance to my own research and writing. I must, therefore, make the time for it.

All this preamble is my way to lead you into the dilemma I now found myself with the book.

I have read something in it that I know is not true. Pinker states otherwise. In fact, it is such a blunder that I can not believe he has made it. Further, it is a significant, pivotal point in his argument about our moral evolution. He writes in the chapter entitled ‘The Rights Revolutions’ in the subsection called ‘Animal Rights and the Decline of Cruelty to Animals’ the following:

But any intuition that vegetarianism and humanitarianism go together was shattered in the 20th-century by the treatment of animals under Nazism. Hitler and many of his henchmen were vegetarians, not so much out of compassion for animals as from an obsession with purity, a pagan desire to reconnect to the soil, and a reaction to the anthropocentrism and meat rituals of Judaism. In an unsurpassed display of the human capacity for moral compartmentalization, the Nazis, despite their unspeakable experiments on living humans, instituted the strongest laws for the protection of animals in research that Europe had ever seen. Their laws also mandated humane treatment of animals in farms, movie sets, and restaurants, where fish had to be anesthetized and lobsters killed swiftly before they were cooked. Ever since that bizarre chapter in the history of animal rights, advocates of vegetarianism have had to retire one of their oldest arguments: that eating meat makes people aggressive, and abstaining from it makes them peaceful. (462)

Now, it is possible that buried elsewhere in the 700 pages Pinker refutes the claim that Hitler et al were vegetarians and the Third Reich were the forerunners of the contemporary animal rights movement. I just have not come across … yet.

Having got this benefit of the doubt out of the way, I am left with asking: How can someone as smart as Pinker get it so wrong?

Hitler was no more a vegetarian than the Third Reich gave birth to the contemporary animal rights movement. This nonsense is usually written by those who oppose animal rights and have a financial vested interest in the commercial exploitation of animals. But a world-renowned psychologist and author studying the behavioural and moral development of our own species?

Nevertheless, I will continue to read the book. But all the pleasure, excitement and the anticipation of discovering new things and ideas, well, they are long gone. Which is such a shame.

A big part of the fun of Our Hen House is listening to Mariann Sullivan and Jasmin Singer banter and bicker with each other.

The good folks at Our Hen House, Mariann Sullivan and Jasmin Singer, recently interviewed me and our chat, which ranged over a number of issues, was published as part of Episode 97. You can listen to it here.

Our Hen House is a fantastic resource for anyone who cares about animals. It’s fun, upbeat and always interesting. But there’s a serious side, too. The Our Hen House Web site is also a rich source of information and resources on animal rights and vegan living.

In our conversation we explored such issues as the Animals and Society Institute, similarities and differences in animal rights and veganism between the UK and USA and gay rights and animal rights. I also spoke about my four key values — truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing — which I explore in my forthcoming book, Animal Dharma.

I recommend listening to this episode not only for my interview but also for all the other interesting features it includes. And while you’re at it, I suggest checking out previous podcasts.

Marti Kheel

Along with Carol J. Adams and Batya Bauman, Marti Kheel in the 1990s and thereafter made a tremendous impact on my thinking about our relationship with animals.

They introduced me to ecofeminism and my understanding of what animal rights meant to me deepened both professionally and personally.

It is with this is in mind that it is with great sorrow that I note here Marti’s recent death from leukaemia.

If there is one thing that I think we can to do to remember Marti it is to read her excellent book, Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective. Here’s one of my favourite insights:

Outside the field of ecofeminism most nature philosophers continue to ignore the relevance of gender to destructive practices toward nature. A holistic ecofeminist philosophy, in contrast, begins by naming this reality. It seeks to identify not only the dualistic ideologies that perpetuate the abuse of nature, women, and marginalized others, but the ways in which those ideologies are intertwined with psychosocial identities. Ecofeminists must also turn their critical analysis to the field of nature ethics, remaining alert to residues of masculinism within other nature philosophies. Although identifying the influence of gender on moral conduct and thought will not eliminate masculinism, it can provide a first step toward destablizing its influence. (p.218)