Newkirk meant by that, however, is entirely different from what most of us understand about our common mammalian identity. As Ingrid Newkirk, president of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said in Washingtonian magazine: “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. I confess, I’m a speciesist then.Īs Smith chronicles, the mission of the animal rights movement is to eradicate the notion of human exceptionalism. In this case, someone who discriminates against animals by not giving them the same rights as people. Like the labels “racist” and “chauvinist,” a speciesist is a person who discriminates against another class of persons. It was Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, the father of the contemporary animal rights movement, who coined the term “speciesism” in his mid-1970s manifesto, Animal Liberation. His latest book, A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement, is not only a carefully documented analysis of a movement, it is a tacit defense of human exceptionalism. Believing as I do in the priority of the human species among all other animal species probably makes me, ironically, a dinosaur.
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