Two professors at the University of Sheffield have published a piece in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies to extend hate speech protections to animals to deal with hateful “speciesist” remarks. Drs. Josh Milburn and Alasdair Cochrane insist that such protections will help achieve a “more benign human–animal relations within society.” The need for speech criminalization is based on the view that “some animals do seem to have their social confidence eroded because of their awareness of the risk of violence.”
We previously discussed the campaign by PETA to end the use of animal references in pejorative comments. It called for the end of the use of pig, chicken, pig, rat, snake and other references to “stand up for justice by rejecting supremacist language.”These two academics go further to demand actual speech crimes and controls to protect animals:
“Laws against hate speech protect members of certain human groups. However, they do not offer protection to nonhuman animals. Using racist hate speech as our primary example, we explore the discrepancy between the legal response to hate speech targeting human groups and what might be called anti-animal or speciesist hate speech….We thus conclude that, absent a compelling alternative argument, there is no in-principle reason to support the censure of racist hate speech but not the censure of speciesist hate speech.”
“the best reading of Waldron’s theory must include certain animals within its protective remit…some states have enacted constitutional provisions for the sake of animals, some of which explicitly recognise the ‘dignity’ of animals.But, again, none of these provisions acknowledges that animals possess the Waldronian sense of civic dignity: none views animals as possessing equal social standing, membership, status, and rights. No community truly regards its animal residents as members of society, and none recognises them as equals.”
The argument illustrates how speech controls and crimes develop into an insatiable appetite for more and more regulation in maintaining what Waldron calls a better society. More and more speech is pulled into this vortex of criminalization and regulation.
As many know on this blog, I have long called for greater protections for animals and the recognition broader of animal rights. This includes greater standing to argue for relief in court on behalf of such animal interests. However, I am also a free speech advocate. Indeed, academics like Waldron probably view me as something of an extremist in my own right. I admit that I oppose most regulation and criminalization of speech. I may be a free speech dinosaur in that sense. Traditional free speech values are certainly out of vogue among academics. I believe in largely unfettered free speech, particularly for statements made off campus or outside of a classroom. I seriously do not believe that these animals are harmed by such comments but I know that free speech will be further harmed by their criminalization.
The danger is really not a line of woke Weimaraners because this really protects the sensibilities of humans. Indeed, it may be an odd form of anthropomorphism in assuming hurt feelings that humans would have. Animals can clearly sense anger and disapproval. However, few leave the room when you complain of living a “dog’s life” or “eating like a pig.”
There is a point about such phraseology but I prefer Dr. Doolittle’s version:
You can read the study here.
Update:
Soon after this column was posted, I received a thoughtful and clarifying response from Professor Milburn. With his approval, I can including that response to this posting so that readers understand the position of the authors. I appreciate his reaching out and I encourage readers to consider the more nuanced view that he is suggesting:
Thank you for blogging about the article I wrote with Alasdair Cochrane on animals and hate speech. We, of course, welcome engagement and analysis from legal scholars.I am emailing to clarify that, in the article, we do not say that animals should be protected from hate speech. We argue for a conditional: given that we have found — in existing scholarly discourse about the foundations of hate speech law — no compelling reason to draw a line, we conclude that if humans should be protected by hate-speech laws, then (in principle) animals should be protected by hate-speech laws.I believe that this is a conclusion that could be endorsed by people who support the existence of hate-speech laws and those who do not. Indeed, I have previously spoken with a colleague who is, like you, very sceptical of hate-speech laws, and he suggested that Alasdair and I frame the paper explicitly as a reductio-style argument against hate-speech laws. We do not do this in the paper — indeed, we do not take a side in the question of whether hate-speech laws are justified at all. But we welcome engagement with our arguments from people who are generally supportive of hate-speech laws and those who are generally opposed.Anyways; thank you, again, for taking the time to write about our paper.
And the lunatic left finds another non-cause to get worked up about. The fact is THEY are the ones who are speciest for thinking PLANTS don’t think and feel. Intelligence is a base of ALL creation, even a rock. Maybe it’s time these people live without eating anything. https://smile.amazon.com/Tompkins-SECRET-PLANTS-Harper-Printing/dp/B0886G889Y/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1DO1F6L6JX4C5&dchild=1&keywords=the+secret+life+of+plants+peter+tompkins&qid=1624377873&s=books&sprefix=the+secret+life+of+plants%2Caps%2C235&sr=1-5
these guys are so profoundly disordered they could run for mayor of any big blue city in america
-and win-
“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without,
ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions,
and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense.
Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself,
creating his own boredom out of his own affluence,
his own vulnerability out of his own strength,
his own impotence out of his own erotomania,
himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down,
and having convinced himself that he was too numerous,
labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer.
Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility,
and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction,
he keeled over–a weary, battered old brontosaurus–and became extinct.”
― Malcolm Muggeridge, Vintage Muggeridge: Religion and Society
Black Labs Matter
Is the term “Witch Hunt” sexist? Or is it just a micro aggression!
I wonder if hate speech against animals was ever considered by Freud???
A security guard at the Manchester Arena during the Ariana Grande concert in 2017 witnessed a 22-year old, brown skinned man with a heavy rucksack lurking outside the Arena. The security guard decided not to do anything because he was worried that he might be branded a racist.
A few minutes later, Salman Ramadan Abedi, a radical lslamic terrorist, detonated the shrapnel laden bomb he had concealed in that rucksack. Twenty-three people, mainly teenagers and young adults, never went home to see their families. Over 800 more were seriously injured.
The fault doesn’t lie with the security guard, a minimum wage worker just trying to do his job, but with a racism-obsessed ideology that makes ordinary people afraid to confront the obvious.
The Mad Hatter anyone