Hmmm. Hard to react in a way that won’t get someone pissed at me…
I don’t find the website convincing. By that I mean I don’t find it convincing that eating meat is horrible, terrible, but also don’t find it to convince me that PETA are horrible, terrible.
I will agree with those who find it to be bad marketing. It’s simply unconvincing – perhaps we’re so used to shocking images that we (at least I) just don’t have a gut reaction to them any more.
I was married to a moral vegetarian in a previous life, and several friends were PETA folks. I was vegetarian myself during this period (though admittedly out of convenience more than moral qualms). I find myself MUCH more swayed by explanations of animal issues than by shock-value images.
Perhaps the comparison to holocaust is minimizing their argument by overstatement? I, for one, am prepared to admit that animals are mistreated in our society, but I’m not prepared to admit an analogy to the holocaust, thus the argument they’re presenting here actually reduces my amenity to support the position.
Also, having grown up on a farm perhaps I am used to (or hardened to, or immune to, or know the reality of) how food-animals are really treated. I tend to think there’s a significant dose of “find the bad apple and poison the barrel by implication” in PETA’s presentations…
Sorry if this is rambling without drawing any conclusions, but I fear that’s how I feel about the issue overall.
I don’t think anyone’s saying that PETA is guilty of anything more than the worst taste this side of David Duke’s velour hairpiece. They are killing common courtesy, but they’re not torturing puppies.
Bingo.
Because they insist on an all-or-nothing approach to their message (All killing of animals is equivalent to all killing of humans, no exceptions or special cases.), they drive away anyone who is not already of that stripe. Their use of amazingly tasteless ad campaigns only worsens their public image, tarnishing it to the point where they can be drug out by the anti-vegetarian crowd to aid their arguments.
PETA has become the Ozzy Osbourne of the vegetarian crowd: "There but for the grace of basic sanity… " It’s visible, rich, obnoxious, and the worst possible thing to happen to anyone trying to legitimise the movement. How PETA became the generally-accepted `front’ for the vegetarian crowd is beyond me. The anti-cruelty crowd, a different but overlapping movement, at least has the SPCA, an eminently sane and respectable group.
Vegetarians sick of PETA’s grandstanding and counterproductive antics need to create a new group. Call it something like VI, Vegetarians International. Promote it as the sane organization for vegetarian issues, something that explicitly rejects PETA’s actions while embracing what PETA was meant to stand for. Maybe such a group already exists. If it does, it’s time for it to come out of the shadows.
Exactly! I fully support animal rights, and wish I could find a group as publically well-known as PETA. Shock value will never win over new converts, it just scares them away. It’s counterproductive. To someone like me, I don’t get as upset over PETA as the next person, but mostly because I know we ultimately share the same goal: animal welfare.
It makes me think of a gay friend of mine who takes issue with (his words) “flamers” because that’s what he feels the general public and mainstream media focus on. How “different and weird” gay people seem to straight society because of that, he feels. It’s funny because in that instance, I don’t think any member of the gay community should be shamed into conforming… But when it comes to PETA, I do think they do us a disservice. That’s sort of off-topic, I know. Sorry!
Everytime I read about people who want to stop testing on animals I think about Jenny. Jenny was an employee of mine many years ago. 18, beautiful, and full of life. The archtypical California girl. Jenny was also severly diabetic.
I recall reading how Dr. Banting had to operate on, and tested on dogs during the creation of insulin. It was this work on animals that allows this lovely, fun, great person to live a normal life, and not be dead long before her time.
Bottom line, I love my dog with all my heart, but he is still just a dog, not a person. If it meant Jenny’s life I would operate on my dog myself.